Talk:Our World (1967 TV program)

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Untitled[edit]

It was a BBC project. They involved the Beatles as they were the most famous people in the world at that time. The article leaves out all details of the European contribution to the programme.-

A Beatles project?[edit]

38.118.43.2 I have no first-hand knowledge of this broadcast, as I was only born in 1969. However, was this program really a Beatles project, or was this a BBC project with Beatles input? On the wiki page for the single "All you need is love" it states the BBC commissioned a song for OUR WORLD, which implies the BBC drove the project (probably in connection with other European/world broacasters) specifically to demonstrate the new technology. 38.118.43.2

It wasn't a Beatle project, certainly. I'm not sure if it was an international project to which the BBC contributed, or if the project was theirs. --kingboyk 07:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It was a European Broadcast Union project, originating from an idea by a BBC producer. The Beatles contributed a new song that appeared near the end of the two and half hour broadcast. I wouldn't state that it was a Beatles project, because they were not involved in the planning, and were merely guests on the show.--Abebenjoe 00:42, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was a student of TV at the time and watched the show in 1967, before joining the BBC in 1969. Earlier in 67, for the first time it became technically possible, in theory, to link any part of the world by satellite TV beams and there was a lot of discussion within the BBC about how this significant milestone should be marked. (Of course in truth there were many parts of the globe that were still way beyond the reach of TV facilities, and the polar regions were not covered by satellites). Aubrey Singer wanted to get away from the content of earlier such satellite link ups that since 1965 had tended either to be explanations of the technicalities of satellites or just a reporter asking people on the street what having "global TV" meant to them. There was much comment in the UK press that while many countries were going to feature some of their most renowned cultural ambassadors Britain intended to show a long haired pop group. The BBC's choice of the Beatles was the subject of much argument and it is hard now to comprehend that the group's fame beyond young fans and their wider acceptance did not happen till much later. There was quite a lot of hostility to the Beatles at the time for many reasons but the popular press did tend to play along to the views of its older readers. So far from being a Beatles project their involvement was controversial.

Also interesting in a historical perspective was the withdrawal of the USSR and its Eastern European allies in the OIRT broadcasting organisation a few days before transmission as part of a number of Soviet protests over the Six Day War taking place in the Middle East. The USSR said it believed that the Israeli army's success on the battlefield was as a result of it being directly assisted by the US military. There was much discussion at the time about whether such a small nation could really have achieved so much on its own and without any direct help, but well before 25th June this notion had been discounted. In the days before the broadcast the BBC tried very hard to persuade Moscow to change its mind and its statements stressed the apolitical nature of the show and human stories it would tell, but without success.

The whole project was very idealistic and the team fired with much zeal and vision by Aubrey Singer. (Leonard) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leonard9ca (talk • contribs) 23:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External links error?[edit]

Um... the external link to the CBC's coverage actually links to an A(ustralian)BC page that is not what is described. Can someone in the know fix this? --RealGrouchy 01:55, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Technical issue[edit]

In the description of the broadcast, it is claimed that the switch from Japan to Australia was the most complicated one, because both ground stations had to reverse their actions. This is unclear, would not every switch in ground stations demand exactly that course of actions? If there were no other ground stations involved, that should be made more clear by the article. 141.76.40.160 (talk) 10:11, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The issue was with NASA's ATS satellite. Japan could only use transponder number 2, while the Australian station could use both transponders on the satellite. Here's an explanation from the article "The Whole World's Watching" cited in the main article.
The Pacific presented a trickier situation. At the time of the Geneva meeting the two satellites "Our World" would eventually use there--NASA's ATS-1 and Intelsat 2 F2--hadn't even been launched. ATS was launched by an Atlas-Agena D three months later, in December; Intelsat 2 F2 reached its orbital position the following February. Of the two, ATS would play the most important role. "ATS was fundamental to the exercise, actually," recalls "Our World" producer Noble Wilson, a Scotsman who had been with the BBC since 1951. "If we hadn't gotten ATS we would have been in trouble." The 670-pound satellite offered two transponders, devices that receive incoming signals, shift the frequency, and re-transmit them to ground stations. And although each transponder could receive from only one source at a time, it could transmit to several ground stations at once.
Early in the spring of 1967 engineer Eric Griffiths departed to scout the situation. In Japan, he checked out the ground station at Kashima, one of the links with ATS-1, and found it to be a small research station with only five staff members present. "Like any research station it appears to be short of equipment," he wrote in a report to the EBU; "the only beautifully engineered equipment on the station is the antenna itself." Griffiths discovered that Kashima could communicate only with the number-two transponder. A new receiver was available, but the station director told Griffiths that it was unlikely it could be installed by the broadcast date, and he appeared extremely hesitant to make any changes in operations. Griffiths decided not to press the issue.
At Australia's Toowoomba station, Griffiths found a large staff--30 on each shift--cramped together in trailers. Like Kashima's, Toowoomba's transmitter was tuned to send to transponder 2. Although it could receive from both transponders, it had only a single filter for processing visual signals and therefore could not receive television transmission from both simultaneously. When Griffiths asked if Toowoomba's equipment could be retuned to transmit to transponder 1, he was told it would be "very sticky." In the end, such ground station limitations required elaborate planning to make use of the two satellites (see "The Pacific Theater," below).
... The closest "Our World" came to on-air failure was when a sudden downpour hit the ground station at Kashima. The personnel there were afraid to shut down equipment to reverse the feed to transponder 2, leaving Australia with no way to get its last segment out. Squier had to tell Noble Wilson in London that he didn't have the signal, and they launched into a routine to hurry the next sequence in the script up to the plate. They were almost at the close of the show when Squier realized the picture was going to come through after all. "I said to Noble, 'Trust me. I've got it.' And that was absolutely alien to all the protocols--not possible, not going to do it--and he said, 'Are you sure?' And I said, 'Yeah.' And he said, 'Okay, you've got it.' And he gave me the shot. The thing came up once, went down once, came up once--three-two-one, hit it--and it was literally an electronic miracle."

--Abebenjoe (talk) 08:24, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All You Need...[edit]

Not wanting to by AYNIL about it, but the header includes the line "[the Beatles performed]...'All You Need Is Love', composed especially for the occasion.". However All You Need Is Love indicates that this may well not be the case and that some sources claim that the song had already been written. Some consistency needed here! --HappyDog (talk) 16:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First live satellite broadcast?[edit]

Wasn't the live broadcast of JFK's funeral transmitted directly to many non-US countries. at least in Western Europe, by satellite? William Manchester seems to imply in The Death of a President that the live coverage was shared in real time far outside North America. He doesn't explicitly mention a satellite link, but it might have been hard to achieve that kind of on-the-spot live coverage across the Atlantic except by satellite.Strausszek (talk) 06:38, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the Telstar and Syncom articles, it seems that it was possible to have low-quality one-off broadcasts between two points from about 1960, if the satellite was in the right place. 'Our World' was marking the arrival of routine round-the-world broadcast-quality links. Could the JFK funeral coverage have been by underwater lines? Matt's talk 19:25, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On second thoughts, Mr Manchester probably means radio. Matt's talk 19:27, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll check Manchester and other sources on this - I don't own DOAP myself, read it some years ago and noticed what he said about the impact of the new medium in connection with the funeral - but I know I've read in some other place that even Soviet tv showed a much condensed summary of the funeral, including some bits from the actual mass at St.Patrick's (which would be quite amazing for '60s USSR). And if that was what the Soviet Union did, it seems reasonable that at least some Western European countries might have secured a feed of fully live tv. This is quite interesting since the death of JFK and the following few days were one of the first big "tv news events" where television actively shaped people's awareness of what was happening, and bound the community together. As somebody put it, news television matured in those few days and showed a potential that very few had credited it with previously. Strausszek (talk) 22:09, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The article does not claim to be the first satellite broadcast, but rather the first live-worldwide TV broadcast. Other live TV broadcasts did not have a global reach, as a minimum of three geosynchronous satellites are needed to provide such coverage, which didn't happen until 1967. The first trans-Atlantic satellite TV broadcast was with Telstar in 1962 (John Logie Baird achieved the first-ever trans-Atlantic "broadcast" using both telephone lines and shortwave radio, using his low-defination mechanical-scan equipment in the late 1920s and early 1930s). JFK's funeral, in 1963, was televised by the first-ever geosynchronous satellite, Syncom 2 to Europe.--Abebenjoe (talk) 16:22, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Color[edit]

When was this footage colorized? It can't have been as late as the Anthology, point in case being Eric Idle's parody The Rutles from 1978 which went to great lengths to resemble the authentic look of original footage throughout the whole film, also because the feature was frequently intercutting staged material with original footage, for instance clips from the purported A Hard Day's Rut film were shown in b/w, whereas the footage of The Rutles at Shea Stadium has a strong red color cast, just as the original 1965 audience footage that is thrown in there. Love life, the song played during the Our World parody in the film, has the same artificial colors as does the original. And remember, The Rutles was made in 1978!

So, when was the broadcast of Our World actually colored? In any case, it can't have been any later than 1978! --79.193.53.160 (talk) 11:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

right|thumb|1978 parody, all in glorious artificial color.Added a screenshot from this 1978 parody as it came from the 1990s MovieCD edition (see right). --79.193.50.150 (talk) 16:52, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Our World 25 June 1967 first live international satellite TV - YouTube Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 04:25, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It was specially colourized in 1995 for the Anthology TV Series. It's explained in the article.--Abebenjoe (talk) 08:07, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress[edit]

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Program Details[edit]

When and by whom were broadcasted Callas and Picasso ? Can we have all the details here ? Thanks, --Marc-AntoineV (talk) 08:47, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Arthur C. Clarke[edit]

I remember a short story (or novel) by Arthur C. Clarke in which he described just such a global link-up, using his predicted communications satellites, but I can't recall the title. Can anyone help? PhilUK (talk) 10:40, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Italy?[edit]

Why is there no mention of Italy's contribution to the program, scenes of Franco Zeffirelli at work on his upcoming film of Romeo and Juliet? 2601:545:8201:6290:57D:873:F669:9EAF (talk) 10:10, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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