[OSList] Our World, 1967

Sat Nov 6 06:19:20 PDT 2021

"This is our world.  5/7 ocean, 2/7 land.  135 sovereign countries.  The
home of 3,400 million people, and tonight for the first time we can see
right round our world from sunset to dawn by television.  Television
stations in 14 countries all around the world have joined up to make one
program, this program.  In 43 control rooms all round the world, production
teams are monitoring and selecting the hundreds of pictures and sounds
from 5 continents which will combine to make this historic program."

That was the opening from the 1967 live TV program, Our World
<https://youtu.be/s3LmQFt4pQc?t=41> which featured live footage such as a
baby being born in Mexico, the Beatles recording All You Need is Love in
London, subway construction in Tokyo, etc.

I share this with the OS list because Harrison Owen raised the provocative
question, "What would it look like if 8 billion people were in
conversation?"  In the context of where we've come since 1967 with 400
million people watching that one highly produced program, maybe the
question isn't so crazy after all.

Sincerely,
Lucas Cioffi

P.S. - Here's some additional random info/context about the 1967 broadcast
from Wikipedia...
Broadcast[edit
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Our_World_(1967_TV_program)&action=edit&section=3>
]

The opening credits were accompanied by the Our World theme sung in 22
different languages by the Vienna Boys' Choir
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Boys%27_Choir>.[7]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-EBU-7>

Canada's CBC Television <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBC_Television>
had Marshall
McLuhan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan> being interviewed
in a Toronto television control room
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_studio#Production-control_room>.
At 7:17 pm GMT, the show switched to the United States' segment about
the Glassboro,
New Jersey <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassboro,_New_Jersey> conference
between American president Lyndon Johnson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_Johnson> and Soviet premier
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_of_the_Soviet_Union> Alexei Kosygin
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Kosygin>; since *Our World* insisted
that no politicians be shown, only the house where the conference was being
held was televised. National Educational Television
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Educational_Television>'s (NET)
Dick McCutcheon ended up talking about the impact of the new television
technology on a global scale.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-CBC-1>

The show switched back to Canada at 7:18 pm GMT. Segments that were beamed
worldwide were from a Ghost Lake, Alberta
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta> ranch
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranch>, showing a rancher, and his cutting
horse <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_(sport)>, cutting out a herd
of cattle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle>. The last Canadian segment
was from Kitsilano Beach <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsilano_Beach>,
located in Vancouver <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver>'s Point Grey
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Point_Grey> district at 7:19 pm GMT.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-CBC-1>

At 7:20 pm GMT, the program shifted continents to Asia, with Tokyo, Japan
being the next segment. It was 4:20 a.m. local time and NHK
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHK> showed the construction of the Tokyo
subway <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway> system.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-CBC-1>

The equator was crossed for the first time in the program when it switched
to the Australian contributions, which was at 5:22 a.m. Australian Eastern
Standard Time <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Australia> (AEST).
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
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne> had to switch from receive to
transmit mode.[2]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-AirSpaceMag_1996-2>
The
first segment dealt with trams
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W-class_Melbourne_tram> leaving the South
Melbourne tram depot
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Melbourne_tram_depot> with Australian
Broadcasting Commission
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Broadcasting_Corporation>'s Brian
King explaining that sunrise was many hours away as it was winter there.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-CBC-1> Two
scientific segments, later on in the broadcast, were also included; one,
presented from Canberra by the ABC's Eric Hunter showed experiments being
carried out by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Scientific_and_Industrial_Research_Organisation>
(CSIRO)
to extend the frequency of cereal crop cycles, while the second dealt with
the Parkes Observatory
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory> tracking
a deep space object.[8]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-ABC-8>
The Beatles' sequence[edit
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Our_World_(1967_TV_program)&action=edit&section=4>
]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_you_need_is_love.jpg>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_you_need_is_love.jpg>
The Beatles <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles> performing "All You
Need is Love <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Need_Is_Love>"

As the broadcast took place at the height of the Vietnam War
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War>, the Beatles were asked to
write a song with a positive message.[9]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-Twenty_Years-9>
At
8:54 GMT the Beatles topped the event with their debut performance of "All
You Need Is Love <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Need_Is_Love>". The
Beatles invited many of their friends to the event to create a festive
atmosphere and to join in on the song's chorus. Among the friends were
members of the Rolling Stones
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones>, Eric Clapton
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Clapton>, Marianne Faithfull
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Faithfull>, Keith Moon
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Moon> and Graham Nash
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Nash>.[9]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)#cite_note-Twenty_Years-9>
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