(Gibson) On this day in 1967, 40 million people saw The Beatles perform "All You Need is Love," live via satellite as part of the TV global link up, Our World. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Graham Nash, Keith Moon and Gary Leeds provided backing vocals. Gibson takes a look back: On June 25, 1967, the BBC put on the world's first global satellite television broadcast. The program was called Our World, and consisted of five different segments from five continents, a tremendous technological undertaking in 1967.
Selected countries were to produce two items that best symbolized the their life and culture. The BBC chose to produce a four-minute report on Scottish town Cumbernauld and also asked The Beatles to come up with a special song that would reflect the times and the occasion and be understandable by all watching nations. As an incentive, The Beatles would receive £2,000 for their performance.
John Lennon, always good for a slogan, as he'd show consistently post-Beatles, came up with a perfect summer of love peace anthem, "All You Need is Love."
The ambitious satellite link-up was devised by the BBC and executed by the pioneering producer Aubrey Singer, who pulled in an incredible lineup of contributing countries and networks: Australia (ABC), Austria (ORF), Canada (CBC), Denmark (DZR), France (ORTF), Italy (RAI), Japan (NHK), Mexico (TS Mexicana), Spain (TVE), Sweden (SRT), Tunisia (RTT), United Kingdom (BBC), United States (NET) and West Germany (ARD). Our World was also shown Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland, although those countries did not provide content. It would have been more, but just a week before the planned broadcast, the Soviet Union and several Eastern Bloc countries backed out. more on this story
