Pan American Satellite, a private international satellite system based in Greenwich, Connecticut, carried live coverage of Emperor Hirohito’s funeral in the first ever Japanese television broadcast to Latin America: the bird is a GE/Astro Series 3000 located at 45 degrees West Longitude and has 24 transponders in both the Ku and C-bands arranged within six beam patterns covering Western Europe, the US, the Caribbean and Central and South America; the New York company Fujisankei Communications International Inc, affiliated to the Tokyo-based Fuji Television Network, broadcast the funeral on its Japanese language news show Ohayo America, and is also the first Japanese network to transmit a programme over the satellite.
