By Steve Fidel
Deseret News staff writer

The LDS Church is able to broadcast its general conferences around the world thanks to one of the most extensive audio and video distribution networks on the globe.
More than 3,300 satellite downlinks at church buildings, and broadcasts by 23 television stations, 1,157 cable systems and 26 radio stations in the United States and Canada, and other satellite and videotape distribution send the familiar sounds from the Tabernacle on Temple Square far and wide.
A time line of broadcast technology shows The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is eager to send conference and other church programming to its members by the best and most advanced means available.
The first commercial radio broadcasting in the United States began in 1921. General conference was on the air by 1924.
Televisions first went on sale in 1946. General conference was first televised in 1949.
The year 1957 marked the first use of videotape to record and rebroadcast television programming. General conference at the time was being recorded on 16mm film but converted to videotape in 1963.
Radio broadcasts were supplemented by telephone feeds that carried conference to members assembled in buildings until 1979, when the first satellite television broadcast was made as a test and radio transmissions were first sent to Latin America by satellite.
Television broadcasts via satellite expanded in a 1979 test. And in 1980, the church celebrated its sesquicentennial by broadcasting general conference to six sites from both Salt Lake City and the David Whitmer Farm in New York, a historic church site.
''The whole thing was quite an extraordinary coordination of technology that had not previously even been possible,'' said Richard Alsop, president of Bonneville Communications, the church's broadcast arm.
''As a result of the success of that experience, we were asked to look at ways to more effectively distribute more of the conference to more members of the church. We looked at all of the media alternatives, and it became obvious that satellite was really going to be the means of the future to deliver more conference to more members of the church in a more timely way,'' Alsop said.
Advances in technology not only broaden the church's ability to distribute general conference but add to the reliability of the distribution as well.
Twenty years or so ago, Saturday conference sessions were transmitted by cable to a production center in Los Angeles, where videotape copies of the proceedings were made. Couriers took the tapes and flew them to television stations around the country and into Canada where they were rebroadcast the next day.
''Occasionally couriers would miss connections #151; maybe a flight would be delayed and they'd miss a connecting flight,'' Alsop said.
''One courier was going to Niagara Falls. The weather was bad. He ended up having to charter a small plane in order to get where he needed to go. He was dressed for Los Angeles weather and had no overcoat when he got to New York, and it was really cold.''
''These couriers had to be very innovative on the spot in order to meet these commitments,'' Alsop said. ''But there was never one (delivery) missed. It always was accomplished and conference was always broadcast.''
The church has found that the latest technology does not always replace an existing practice.
Thomas E. Brown, director of Satellite and Support Services is responsible for satellite and video distribution of general conference. He said that while a network of three satellites now carries live and tape-delayed television broadcasts throughout America and parts of Europe, conference sessions are still sent to Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, eastern and western Europe and Russia on videotape.
Satellite broadcasts carry conference in 16 different languages, which is all the satellite can handle, Brown said. Conference sessions are translated into 34 languages.
The church has leases on satellite transponders it uses most frequently. But the limited availability and high cost of satellite transponders to Latin America and the Pacific have kept the church from broadcasting in these areas.
Richard Merrell, international producer for the church's Audiovisual Department, said about 3,500 videotape copies of conference recorded in English and 34 other languages are sent to locations around the world where satellite, cable or network broadcasts are not available.
The number of videotape copies needed has decreased in recent years because of increased satellite use in Europe, Merrell said. The church has more than 150 European satellite downlinks.
Satellite transmission is preferred when it can be broadcast live. ''They are seeing something that is happening right now, the same time we are seeing it,'' Merrell said.