While TFC traces its origins to 1994, the idea of broadcasting television programming via satellite to the millions of the Filipino diaspora everywhere in the world was an innovative idea that the then ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation (now ABS-CBN Corporation) took in the late 1980s, just as it began its road of reconstruction after the brutal and infamous years of Martial Law and the post-Martial Law era. As the network in 1989 began to become once more the Philippines' leading television network, the network finally made the bold step to begin satellite transmissions to Filipinos abroad when in the fall of that very year, ABS-CBN programs were broadcast via satellite to the Northern Mariana Islands, especially to the Filipino families living in Guam and Saipan, making it the first ever Philippine television network to broadcast to viewers outside the country via satellite.