Akademik

n.

A satellite transmission of a TV show or other broadcast that isn't meant for public viewing. Also: wild feed.

— wildfeeder n.

Cult TV shows draw some satellite owners to wildfeeds, sporting events draw others. wildfeeds are raw transmissions of TV shows, sporting events or news reports sent via satellite. It's how American networks send shows to their affiliate stations and Canadian broadcasters, and how TV news reporters feed live reports home. ...

Some of those feeds are listed on Web sites or in a satellite listings guide, but true wildfeeders prefer to go it alone: "It's got to be up there some place," he says, "If you've got a big enough dish you can find it."

— Catherine Dawson March, "Buffy unwrapped before her time," The Globe and Mail, January 22, 2003

Currently, dish owners can buy blocks of popular cable networks, such as MTV and CNN - usually in 20-channel packages - for about $ 1 per channel per month. Satellites, however, also beam down hundreds of unscrambled channels for free. A sampling: the Monitor Channel, the Nostalgia Network, Home Shopping Network, C-SPAN, BET, E!, Canada's CBC, Court TV and lots of ''wild feeds.''

With ''wild feeds,'' viewers can observe Dan Rather sending news stories directly to CBS affiliates or ''Bob Costas off-camera, blowing his nose,'' says Jerry Dempsey, a Canton, Ohio, satellite dealer. ''That's what my customers really love.''

— Jefferson Graham, "Satellites: A bountiful dish for TV fans," USA Today, February 25, 1992

One of the most famous wildfeeds was a 1996 clip that caught NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw bad-mouthing rival anchor Dan Rather during a rehearsal. Brokaw accused Rather of long ago airing stories that were in fact fabricated by an official in the Nixon White House. The official was none other than Donald Rumsfeld, now Defense Secretary in the Bush administration. Brokaw said that during the Nixon administration, "Rummy used to get even with guys in the White House by leaking stuff to Rather that didn't have any basis in fact." He also said that Rather was "factually wrong a lot of the time because he was Rummy's vessel." Ouch. Of course, this doesn't mean that Brokaw's claim is true — he admitted making the comments but tried, unconvincingly, to downplay them — but it serves to illustrate why some people become fanatical satellite surfers who spend much of their free time looking for such tidbits.