audience-share

As the ever-faithful archivist, Doctor Caligari, informs (among other things) on this day back in 1967, the planet was treated to the first global television special via the new medium of satellite broadcasting (invented, proposed by visionary Arthur C. Clark of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame) called simply Our World.
With a viewership of four- to seven-hundred million, the live simulcast was nearly a year in production and included vignettes—much like the time-honoured Eurovision song contest being first proposed to test cross-border communications, from nineteen nations, with the stipulation that all content must be live and that there could be no political undertones. The gala variety show, beamed from NASA intelligence-satellites (the Soviets having withdrawal just days ahead of the broadcast in protest to the West’s stance on the Six-Day Israeli-Arab War). On air, the sequences cut from one feature piece to another, including footage of a cowhand in Canada, the Tokyo subway, the operatic stylings of Maria Callas and the Pablo Picasso experience. The nearly two and a half hour broadcast concluded with the Beatles making their first performance of All You Need is Love, scored especially for this very special episode—a simple message but technically byzantine like the coordination.