Planning
The project was conceived by BBC producer Aubrey Singer. It was transferred to the European Broadcasting Union, but the master control room for the broadcast was still at the BBC in London. The satellites used were Intelsat I (aka "Early Bird"), Intelsat 2-2 ("Lani Bird"), Intelsat 2-3 ("Canary Bird"), and NASA's ATS-1.
It took ten months to bring everything together. One hitch was the sudden pull-out of the Eastern bloc countries headed by the Soviet Union in the week leading up to the broadcast. Apparently it was a protest at 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. In addition, everything had to be 'live', so no use of videotape or film was permitted. Ten thousand technicians, producers, and interpreters took part in this massive broadcast. Each country would have its own announcers, due to language issues, and interpreters 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 between 400 to 700 million people.
Read more about this topic: Our World (TV Special)
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