On the morning of 1 October 1975, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier stepped into a boxing ring in the Philippines to duke it out for the heavyweight championship of the world. The “Thrilla in Manila”, which Ali won after 14 punishing rounds, caused shockwaves around the planet – not just because of what happened in the sticky heat of the ring, but because of the revolutionary way it was being watched.
Some 9,000 miles away in Vero Beach, Florida, it was still the evening of 30 September when 150 senators, congressmen and television executives gathered to witness HBO become the first television network in history to deliver a continuous live signal via satellite.
“You could not have picked a better event, in all the world, to demonstrate the power of satellites for a new industry than the Thrilla in Manila,” remembers Kay Koplovitz, who was there in the room. What had seemed like a science-fiction fantasy just a few years earlier was suddenly a reality. Television would never be the same.
Kevin EG Perry: Collected Works 