Let me clarify. It was actually Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor and Electrical Engineer, who transmitted the first radio signal over the Atlantic Ocean (2200 miles) in 1901.
As a radio ham, I'm well aware of Marconi's accomplishments.
The BBC actually was the first to begin national broadcasting of a radio program in 1922.
Maybe so, I'll take your word for this.
So the point is that satellites are not needed to broadcast a signal long distances and on a flat earth this is how it is done. Otherwise why are there still large antennas all over the world if there are supposedly 20,000+ satellites in orbit.
Wrong. Any radio ham (such as myself) knows (and can easily demonstrate) that worldwide radio communications unassisted by satellites are only possible on frequencies below about 30 MHz that reflect off the ionosphere. Marconi's experiments, for example, were in the vicinity of 0.86 MHz (in the modern-day AM broadcast band.) Higher frequencies punch right through it into space. That includes the frequencies used by GPS (1575.24 MHz), Sirius/XM satellite radio (2350 MHz), and direct satellite TV broadcast (12,200-12,700 MHz).
Furthermore, ionospheric communications are unreliable, being affected by solar activity, and very limited in capacity because of their low frequencies. Real-time TV is impossible. Satellite transmissions are as reliable and solid as the satellites themselves.
Some radio hams also bounce signals off the moon, though it takes a lot of power and very large antennas by amateur standards. The round trip delay is very noticeable at about 3 seconds -- just what it was when NASA communicated with the Apollo astronauts on the moon. A few radio hams even received the Apollo transmissions directly from the moon. Imagine that, individuals verifying NASA's claims for themselves, with their own equipment. So much for having to take them on faith, eh?
