Our World

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Our World

Our World was the first live, international, satellite television

Satellite television

Satellite television is television delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by a satellite dish and set-top box. In many areas of the world it provides a wide range of channels and services, often to areas that are not serviced by terrestrial television or cable television providers....
production, which was broadcast on 25 June 1967. Performers, including opera singer Maria Callas

Maria Callas

Maria Callas was an American-born Greeks soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the twentieth century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique with great dramatic gifts....
and artist Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego Jos? Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Mar?a de los Remedios Cipriano de la Sant?sima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was a Spanish people Painting, drawing, and Sculpture....
, from nineteen nations were invited to perform in separate segments featuring their respective countries, and the two-and-half-hour event had the largest television audience

Audience

An audience is a group of person who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any Media ....
ever up to that date: an estimated 400 million people around the globe watched the broadcast.

Today, it is most famous for the segment from the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
starring The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were a rock music and pop music band from Liverpool, England that formed in 1960. During their career, the group primarily consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr ....
.

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Planning

The project was conceived by BBC producer Aubrey Singer

Aubrey Singer

Aubrey Singer was a United Kingdom broadcasting executive. He was the controller of BBC Two from 1974 until 1978, who replaced Robin Scott and was replaced himself by Brian Wenham....
. It was transferred to the European Broadcasting Union

European Broadcasting Union

The European Broadcasting Union is a confederation of 75 broadcasting organisations from 56 countries, and 43 associate broadcasters from a further 25....
, but the master control room

Master control

Master control is the technical hub of a Broadcasting operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from production control rooms in television studios where the activities such as switching from camera to camera are coordinated....
for the broadcast was still at the BBC in London

London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
. The satellites used were Intelsat I

Intelsat I

Intelsat I was the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, on April 6, 1965. It was built by the Space and Communications Group of Hughes Aircraft Company for COMSAT, which activated it on June 28....
(Early Bird), Intelsat II and ATS-1.

It took ten months to bring everything together. One hitch was the sudden pull-out of the Eastern bloc

Eastern bloc

During the Cold War, the terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to European annexed or expanded Soviet Socialist Republics of the USSR and Satellite state states, including members of the Soviet-dominated organizations Comecon and the Warsaw Pact....
countries headed by the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
in the week leading up to the broadcast. Apparently it was a protest to the Western nations' response to the Six Day War.

The ground rules included that no politicians or heads of state could participate in the broadcast. As well, everything had to be 'live', so no use of videotape or film was permitted. 10,000 technicians, producers, and translators took part in this massive broadcast. Each country would have its own announcers, due to language issues, and translators would voice-over the original sound when not in a country's native language. In the end 14 countries participated in the production that was transmitted to 31 countries with an estimated audience of 400 million people.

The broadcast

The opening credits were accompanied by the Our World theme sung in 22 different languages by the Vienna Boys Choir.

Canada

Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
's CBC Television

CBC Television

CBC Television is a Canadian English language television network. It is owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This channel can be also seen on some United States cable systems....
had Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, Order of Canada was a Canada educator, philosopher, and scholar ? a professor of English literature, a Literary criticism, a rhetorician, and a Communication theory....
being interviewed in a Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population in Canada and the Provinces and territories of Canada Provincial and territorial capitals of Canada of Ontario....
T.V. control room. At 7:17 p.m. GMT, the show switched to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
' segment about the Glassboro, New Jersey

Glassboro, New Jersey

Glassboro is a Borough in Gloucester County, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the borough population was 19,068....
, conference between American president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet premier

Premier of the Soviet Union

Premier of the Soviet Union is the commonly used English language term for the offices of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR , who was the head of government in the Soviet Union....
Alexey Kosygin

Alexey Kosygin

Alexey Nikolayevich Kosygin was a Soviet Union politician and administrator. Serving as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980, he was considered a reformer in the Soviet leadership and the main rival to hardline Communist Party of the Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev....
; since Our World insisted that no politicians be shown, only the house where the conference was being held was televised. National Educational Television

National Educational Television

National Educational Television was an American educational television television network in the United States from 1952 to 1970. It was replaced on 5 October 1970 by the Public Broadcasting Service, which continues to the present....
's (NET) Dick McCutcheon ended up talking about the impact of the new television technology on a global scale.

The show switched back to Canada at 7:18 p.m. GMT. Segments that were beamed worldwide were from a Ghost Lake, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is one of Canada Canadian Prairies Provinces and territories of Canada. It became a province on September 1, 1905.Alberta is located in western Canada, bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S....
ranch

Ranch

A ranch is an area of landscape, including various structures, given primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool....
, showing a rancher, and his cutting horse, cutting out a herd of cattle. The last Canadian segment was from Kitsilano Beach

Kitsilano Beach

Kitsilano Beach is one of the most popular beaches in Vancouver, especially in the warm summer months. Located at the north edge of the Kitsilano neighbourhood, the beach faces out onto Burrard Inlet ....
, located in Vancouver, British Columbia's Point Grey

West Point Grey

West Point Grey is a neighbourhood on the western side of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is bordered by 16th Avenue to the south, Alma Street to the east, English Bay to the north, and Blanca Street to the west....
district at 7:19 p.m. GMT.

At 7:20 p.m. GMT, the program shifted continents to Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
, with Tokyo

Tokyo

, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan of Japan and located on the eastern side of the main island Honshu. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the Tokyo City in the eastern part of the prefecture, and total over 8 million people....
, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
being the next segment. It was 4:20 a.m. local time and NHK

NHK

, or Japan Broadcasting Corporation, is Japan's public broadcaster. The NHK is financed by a television licence. This Japanese public corporation has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, NHK....
showed the construction of the Tokyo Subway

Tokyo Subway

The Tokyo subway is an integral part of the world's most extensive rapid transit system in a single metropolitan area, Greater Tokyo. While the subway system itself is largely within the city center, the lines extend far out via extensive through services onto suburban railway lines....
system.

The equator was crossed for the first time in the program when it switched to the Australian contribution, which was at 5:22 a.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time

Time in Australia

Standard time was introduced into Australia in the 1890s when all colonies adopted standard times. Before the switch to standard times, each local municipality was free to determine its own local time, called local mean time....
(AEDT). This was the most technically complicated point in the broadcast, as both the Japanese and Australian satellite ground stations had to reverse their actions: Tokyo had to go from transmit mode to receive mode, while Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the more common name for the geographic region and Census in Australia of the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area. It is the second List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a population of approximately 3.8 million and serves as the List of Australian capital cities of Victoria ....
had to switch from receive to transmit mode. The segment dealt with Trams leaving the Hammer Street Depot

Trams in Melbourne

Trams were introduced into Melbourne, Australia in 1885 and it is now home to the largest tram network in the world. The network consists of of track, 500 trams, 28 routes, and 1,813 tram stops ....
in Melbourne with Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as the ABC, is Australia's national Public broadcasting.With a budget of Australian dollar840 million annually, the corporation provides television, radio, online and mobile services throughout metropolitan and regional Australia, as well as overseas through the Australia Net...
's Brian King explaining that sunrise was many hours away as it was winter there. A scientific segment, later on in the broadcast, was also included that dealt with the Parkes Observatory

Parkes Observatory

The Parkes Observatory is a radio telescope observatory, 20 kilometres north of the town of Parkes, New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia....
tracking a deep space object.

External links

at The Internet Movie Database