Who was the first musician to have a concert broadcast globally?
By now, it’s hard to imagine a world without streaming. At the click of a button, people can access anything: any song, album, movie, TV show, book, or video clip of their favourite artist performing their favourite song. During the 2020 pandemic, we also got used to being able to access concerts, as artists could still perform live but with a digital audience watching. The idea of beaming something around the world no longer feels futuristic, but back when the first ever satellite concert happened, sending live music into homes worldwide, it was a historic moment.
It wasn’t that long ago that the world simply didn’t have the technology to stream things. The internet wasn’t invented until 1983, but it would be years longer before people had Wi-Fi at home and years after that before streaming platforms were invented, with the capability of showing things globally and easily. Obviously, television has been around for a while, but live television, able to go directly from the studio to television sets, took longer to master, eventually allowing for things like sports games to be shown live so people at home could react in real-time to the stadium.
But still, when the first satellite concert happened in the 1970s, it was an experiment. It was an even bigger risk when NBC decided to call upon one of the biggest stars in the world for that experiment: Elvis Presley.
By 1973, Presley’s reputation had undeniably dropped off due to a series of bad business moves from his manager, The Colonel. But he was still one of the world’s most recognised and widely beloved stars, making him an ideal candidate to be beamed onto television sets worldwide.
The date was set for January 14th, 1973. Presley was to perform a television special called Aloha From Hawaii which was also done as a benefit concert for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund. It was to be the first ever concert by a solo artist to be aired globally. It was shown live to audiences in Asia and Oceania, and then eventually in Europe although there was a day delay.
Filmed at the Honolulu International Centre, the concert saw Presley perform a 22-track set list of his greatest hits, including ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, ‘Love Me Tender’, ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Burning Love’ and more. He also thrilled the live audience of 6,000 watching in person, and at the end of ‘An American Trilogy’, he threw his belt into the crowd. After the live show, a few more additional tracks were recorded and attached to the delayed version that would go out to American audiences a few months later as NBC chose not to show it live in the US to avoid clashes with the Superbowl.
It was estimated that around 1.5billion people across 36 countries watched Aloha From Hawaii. It raised $75,000, equivalent to $514,800 in 2023, for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund.
How many concerts did Elvis Presley perform?
As part of Aloha From Hawaii, Elvis Presley performed two concerts: a rehearsal show on January 12th and the official performance, which was shown live on the 14th.
This was performed in the middle of his incredible run in Las Vegas, where he performed 636 consecutive shows from July 31st, 1969, to December 1976. It’s estimated that Presley performed 1,684 concerts in total across his lifetime.
