The
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began soliciting proposals for a new television standard for the U.S. in the late 1980s and later decided to ask companies competing to create the standard to pool their resources and work together, forming what was known as the
Grand Alliance in 1993. On July 23, 1996,
WRAL-TV (the then
CBS affiliate in
Raleigh, North Carolina; now affiliated with
NBC) became the first television station in the United States to broadcast a digital television signal. HDTV sets became available in the U.S. in 1998 and broadcasts began around November 1998. The first public HDTV broadcast was of the launch of the Space Shuttle
Discovery and
John Glenn's
return to space; that broadcast was made possible in part by the
Harris Corporation. The first commercial broadcast of a local sporting event in HD was during Major League Baseball's Opening Day on March 31, 1998, the
Texas Rangers against the
Chicago White Sox from The Ballpark in Arlington in Arlington, TX. The telecast was produced by LIN Productions, and overseen by LIN Productions president and Texas Rangers television executive producer Lee Spieckerman. The game was also the inaugural telecast on the digital channel of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas NBC affiliate
KXAS channel 5. The event was simultaneously shown via satellite at a reception attended by members of congress, the FCC and members of the industry in Washington, DC. This telecast was also the first commercial HD broadcast in the state of Texas. The first major sporting event broadcast nationwide in HD was
Super Bowl XXXIV, broadcast by ABC on January 30, 2000. By the
2014–15 season every network show producing new episodes had transitioned to high definition. ==Satellite and cable==