In the case where you don't expect a response, you can still rely on the rudimentary error checking of TCP (checksum and sequence numbers) to detect when damaged or dropped - but this smells like a custom implementation of the protocol.
Good catch, I think the article needs a fix. As I read it, at the edges, everything is TCP/IP. Over satellite, IP multicast (UDP) is used for live audio, and unidirectional file broadcast (using a proprietary protocol with inline forward error correction) for program files.
What would it mean to have one-way communication over TCP? Don't you need to send the acknowledgements back?