The earliest record found was a broadcast by the BBC in 1926 of a Halle Orchestra concert from Manchester, using the wavelengths of the regional stations and Daventry.
The first such transmission in the United Kingdom was on 14 November 1972, when the BBC broadcast a live classical concert from the Royal Albert Hall on both BBC2 and Radio 3.
[5] The first pop/rock simulcast was almost two years later, a recording of Van Morrison's London Rainbow Concert simultaneously on BBC2 TV and Radio 2 (see It's Too Late to Stop Now) on 27 May 1974.
During the mid-1980s the final Australian concert of several major rock artists such as Dire Straits were simulcast live on a commercial TV and FM station.
In South Africa, the SABC radio station Radio 2000 was established in 1986 to simulcast SABC 1 programming, especially imported American and British television shows, in their original English, before South Africa adopted a stereo standard which allowed secondary audio tracks through the television spectrum.
[13] Presently, in the United States, simulcast most often refers to the practice of offering the same programming on an FM and AM station owned by the same entity, in order to cut costs.
In New Zealand, breakfast programme The AM Show airs on television channel Three and was simulcast on radio station Magic Talk; both networks were owned and operated by MediaWorks New Zealand until December 2020, when Three was sold to Discovery, Inc.[15] In 2022, the programme was rebranded as AM and ceased simulcasting on Magic Talk, becoming a TV-only format.
[20][21] Certain events—particularly major charity appeals (such as Hope for Haiti Now and Stand Up to Cancer)—may be jointly simulcast by a consortium of networks in order to ensure a wide audience.
[22][23] In sports, such as American football and baseball, simulcasts are when a single announcer broadcasts play-by-play coverage both over television and radio.
Media outlets disputed the decision and felt it was actually a cost-cutting move by Blue Jays and Sportsnet owner Rogers Communications, as the team had maintained dedicated radio broadcasts in 2020 with a remote crew.
In order to ensure that all of a particular team's games are available on free-to-air television in their home market, NFL rules require that games not aired by a broadcast television network (including cable networks and streaming platforms) be simulcast on a broadcast station in the main market of each participating team.
The regional sports network MASN previously used simulcasts for MLB games played between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals—regional rivals who share the same market and broadcaster.
[30][31][32] In 2021, ESPN introduced a simulcast of selected Monday Night Football games featuring Eli and Peyton Manning, joined by celebrity guests; the success of these broadcasts prompted ESPN to extend the format to other sports, with the Mannings' production company Omaha Productions being involved in some of these broadcasts.
[33][34] On cable television systems, analog-digital simulcasting (ADS) means that analog channels are duplicated as digital subchannels.
In universities with multiple campuses, simulcasting may be used for a single teacher to teach class to students in two or more locations at the same time, using videoconferencing equipment.
In many public safety agencies, simulcast refers to the broadcasting of the same transmission on the same frequency from multiple towers either simultaneously, or offset by a fixed number of microseconds.
This comes at the cost of overall poorer voice quality, as multiple sources increase multipath interference significantly, resulting in what is called simulcast distortion.