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By design and method,
the Live Aid event that took place on July 13, 1985 was meant to be a one time
only live broadcast.
The Live Aid was broadcast on three major television stations on July 13, 1985.
abc, MTV, and BBC. Live Aid was aired in stereo simulcast on BBC 1, abc radio
and a couple of other radio networks.
Upon close review, you will see that each broadcast company televised different
material.
The songs that were chosen for broadcast, the people interviewed and the running
order varied from broadcast to broadcast. This is due to mostly to television
and radio coordinators that thought they could best serve their audience by
providing selections of artist they thought might be the most popular.
abc
abc television had two factors to contend with. The first factor was abc’s
commercial obligations. A number of large advertisers had made agreements with
abc television to donate all of their advertising profits to the Band Aid trust
and famine relief.
The second factor was that certain artists had made requests to appear as part
of the syndicated segment. With a live 16 hour concert, the only way for abc
television to make this to happen was for them to air artists out of order.
Unfortunately for the viewers of abc television, much unnecessary chatter and
commentary was made during key performances by personality of Dick Clark. The
abc broadcast was available in radio stereo simulcast. This meant that you could
watch your mono television while listening to the radio in stereo.
MTV
The MTV broadcast was a bit better than the abc broadcast as far as attempting
to keep the running order of artists. MTV is a private channel and they aired
the concert in chronological order. Some of the performances were missed by
viewer as the vee-jays spoke over the performance. This broadcast was available
in both mono and stereo.
BBC
By far the BBC broadcast is considered to be the most professional. The BBC is a
public channel and there were no commercials during the day. They set up a
special booth within Wembley for guests and personalities. Many stars and actors
took part in interviews that were inserted during sets. The sound on BBC
television was mono, but you could tune your radio to BBC Radio 1 you could
listen to the event in stereo synchro-sound.
To date, Live Aid has NOT been broadcast in its entirety. It has been
re-broadcast by the BBC and VH1 partially on the 10th anniversary and on the
15th anniversary.
VH1
VH1’s 10th Anniversary broadcast was similar to a “Best Of” broadcast. It was
not a rebroadcast of the original event, but a sampling of the event. It
included a look back at the event with interviews and commentary by actors,
artists, producers and musicians.
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