Our World
On June 25, 1967 a two and one half hour special was broadcast on television live, featuring performers, artists, and celebrities from nineteen nations. It was broadcast around the world, and featured the first live performances aired in the northern hemisphere which originated in the southern hemisphere. Titled Our World, it was a program conceived by the British Broadcasting Corporation, which provided the master control room from its studios in London. The program was intended to demonstrate the power of television to link the entire globe by presenting a live program to be watched simultaneously by the peoples of countries around the world.
The program was dependent on the commercially owned communication satellites Early Bird, Lani Bird, and Canary Bird, all versions of the Intelsat satellite. Intelsat satellites were owned and operated by an intergovernmental organization which was supported by eleven countries at its founding, for the purpose of mutual use of international communication satellites. In addition to the Intelsat satellites, the NASA satellite ATS-1, which was in geosynchronous orbit over the equator, was used to feed the transmission signals to and from the southern hemisphere. ATS-1 was primarily a weather satellite which included the capability of relaying television feeds.
It took more than ten months for the preparations for the broadcast to be completed. Arrangements were made for voiceovers in the language of the viewing nation to be broadcast at the same time as the images from the broadcasting country appeared on the screen. Local broadcasters appeared as announcers for each country, and the appearances of artists and performers had to be completely live, with no taped segments or miming to prerecorded songs. Political figures were not allowed to appear. Fourteen countries participated in the actual production, which required the support of more than 10,000 technicians and interpreters.
The Russians were not among them. One week before the program was scheduled to be broadcast the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc countries behind the Iron Curtain announced that they were withdrawing from the broadcast and that they would not allow the broadcast within their respective countries. The withdrawal was in protest to the Six Day War, which led the Soviets and the Eastern Bloc to sever diplomatic ties with Israel. Nonetheless the broadcast went forward as scheduled. Critics found the program to be less than entertaining, too long, and other than the technical achievement it reflected, of little interest.
The broadcast is chiefly remembered as being the last live performance of The Beatles, until their performance on the roof of Abbey Road Studios, an appearance which was filmed. The Beatles performed All You Need is Love, written especially for their appearance, and supported by many of the London pop and rock stars of the day. Originally broadcast in black and white, their performance was later colorized. Snippets of the entire broadcast are available for viewing on internet archive sites. It was the first time the entire world could watch the same programming simultaneously, an activity which by the 21st century had become commonplace.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Yakety-yak, How Do We Talk Back: The Hydraulic Telegraph of Aeneas – Long-distance Communication of Antiquity”, by M.R. Reese, AntiquityNow.org
“How Napoleon’s semaphore telegraph changed the world”, by Hugh Schofield, BBC News, June 17, 2013
“History of Telegraphy”, by Ken Beauchamp, 2001
“History of Wireless”, by T.K. Sarkar and D.C. Baker, 2006
“Communication Satellites: Making the Global Village Possible”, by David J. Whalen, NASA, online
