Our World

National Educational Television and Radio Center · June 25, 1967

For two hours on the afternoon of June 25, 1967, the world took a step closer to Marshall McLuhan's concept of a "global village" as an estimated 500 million persons in 30 nations witnessed the first globe-girdling telecast in history. The all-live program, "Our World," featuring pickups from 42 locations in 18 nations, was presented in the US by National Educational Television. Among the international celebrities featured on the broadcast are The Beatles, seen at a London recording session; Bolshoi Ballet premier Danseuse Maya Plisetskaya from Odessa in the Soviet Union; artists Marc Chagall and Joan Miro from the Foundation Maeght in France; Leonard Bernstein and Van Cliburn rehearsing for Lincoln Center's "Festival 67" in New York; director Franco Zefferelli filming on location in Rome; and stars of the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, West Germany. The program, which opens with a view of the earth as seen from a Soviet space satellite, focuses on man's efforts to solve the problems of food supply and overcrowding, his pursuit of artistic and physical excellence, and his search for the worlds beyond. NET produced the five American-based segments of program: a mechanized farm in Wisconsin for the "Hungary World" sequence; helicopter views of Manhattan for the "Crowded World"; the first television pickup from the Moonport at Cape Kennedy for "The Worlds Beyond"; Bernstein and Cliburn in the "Artistic Excellence"; and the swansong in the Boston Public Garden for "This Moment's World." Other nations that contributed to the broadcast are Australia, France, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, Hungary, East Germany, West Germany, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Tunisia, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Austria and Poland. Four communications satellites were utilized for the worldwide transmission - three American, one Russian. The services of some 10,000 technicians were also needed to make this, the most complex and spectacular broadcast in history, a reality. This marked NET's 17th interconnected broadcast since it began interconnection in January 1967. NET's Washington's correspondent Paul Niven anchors the broadcast from the Western Zone central control studios in New York. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) 2 hour piece distributed by NET through the Interconnect system on June 25, 1967.