Of approximately 3000 cable TV systems, approximately 2/3 have 1000 or fewer subscribers. Many of these have looked forward to taking advantage of distributed cost of high quality programming by using the wide area broadcast capability of communication satellites in conjunction with low cost receive only stations and redistribution networks. Regulatory requirements, state of art hardware, spectrum availability, and in-place and planned space segments seem to forestall this hope. This paper explores the more significant system and economic considerations affecting the use of the space segment as it relates to satellite video and the associated redistribution networks.