Satellite Program Network, or SPN, was a satellite and cable TV network which broadcast in the United States from 1979 to the mid 1980s. SPN was created by Ed Taylor, an associate of Ted Turner and the head of the Southern Satellite Systems company. In 1985, SPN was acquired by Satellite Syndicated Systems [1].
Among the programs broadcast on SPN were Video Concert Hall, an early music-video show (before the launch of MTV); News From Home, a program for Canadians in the US, hosted by early CNN news anchor Don Miller; The Shopping Game, a Nicholson-Muir game show produced in Nashville and hosted by Art James; The Susan Noon Show, featuring celebrity interviews; Nutrition Dialogue, hosted by Dr. Betty Kamen; Sewing with Nancy; and Moscow Meridian, a current-affairs program produced by Soviet authorities and hosted by Vladimir Posner. Reruns of old situation comedies and movies, mostly from low-budget studios, rounded out the schedule.
SPN later became Tempo Television.[2] A Canadian regulatory description of the channel in 1988 said that Tempo's "schedule consists of outdoors, travel, general information and entertainment programming and classic feature films that are in the public domain."[2] In 1988, by which time Tempo had 12 million subscribers (mainly in the South and Southwest), the channel was purchased by NBC.[3] It was relaunched in 1989 as the Consumer News and Business Channel, CNBC.