Giving Opportunities

Sponsoring Air Time

Uplink dish, Cyprus.

One of the most exciting and flexible ways to influence the people of the Middle East and North Africa is by sponsoring SAT-7 "air time."

What is air time? Once a program is produced, it exists on tape or some electronic form. But it still can't be seen by an audience. The program must first be "broadcast."

Here's how it works:

• The program will be assigned an "air time" slot – say Tuesday at 8:00 pm.
• Some time before then, the program is "ingested" into the server system in the SAT-7 Master Control Room on the 6th floor of an office building in downtown Nicosia, Cyprus.
• At precisely the assigned moment, the program is played out and begins a long electronic journey.
• First, it's sent through a cable to a satellite dish on the roof of the building.
• From there it is uplinked to a geosynchronous satellite 22,300 miles above the equator.
• Then it is transmitted back down to earth, and received by a satellite dish at a communications center in London.
• In London, it is combined with other satellite channels and once again, uplinked to another satellite. This is Eutelsat Hotbird 8, a powerful satellite whose "footprint" (receiving area) covers the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Europe. The signal has now traveled over 90,000 miles. Anyone with a suitable dish and receiver can receive it – for free.

Satellite dishes crowd the rooftops of apartment buildings throughout the area.

Although the viewer gets the program for free, it isn't free to SAT-7. Technicians must operate the Master Control Room 24/7. They monitor the quality of the program as it goes out, again after it makes it first "hop" to London, and again after it is broadcast on Hotbird. There is backup power in case of a power failure. There are backup systems in case of equipment failure. And of course the satellite time for both satellites must be paid for.

All of this comes to a sizeable slice of SAT-7's overall budget, but it breaks down to a very manageable $10 per minute.

SAT-7 KIDS reaches millions of children like these.

What do you get for your $10? You make it possible for a minute of a Christian program, that has been produced with a great deal of love and care, to be seen by wide audience. No one can say exactly how many people will be reached by a single minute (see the Program Production brochure), but we can estimate that any given minute would reach at least several hundred thousand and might reach a million or more people.

You can sponsor a single minute for $10. Or, you could sponsor the entire half-hour broadcast for $300. You could sponsor a broadcast every day, once a week, once a month, once a year – or just once. It's entirely up to you.

Perhaps your small group Bible study or Sunday School class would like to sponsor a weekly broadcast. You could take pledges from the members and sponsor however many minutes of broadcast time it comes out to. It's flexible.

SAT-7 viewers in an auto repair shop. Television sets are everywhere in the Middle East.

Perhaps the children at a Vacation Bible School or a children's Sunday School class at your church would like to give an offering to sponsor children's programming for the children of the Middle East and North Africa. We will be happy to send a DVD of children's programming to you and also supply other promotional materials.

Whether large or small, your gift to sponsor SAT-7 air time will make a significant and eternal difference in the lives of many you will probably never meet this side of heaven. What better way could you possibly invest $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000, $25,000 or more?

If you would like to make a contribution to SAT-7, please click here for more information.