"It's twelve noon in London, seven a.m. in Philadelphia, and around the world it's time for: Live Aid." With this sentence, BBC presenter Richard Skinner opened the biggest, most ambitious, but - and more about that - unfortunately also the most ineffective charity event in the history of rock and pop music on July 13, 1985. Triggered by the famine in East African Ethiopia and inspired by the success of the charity single "Do They Know It's Chistmas?", Bob Geldof has launched a festival to shake the world up and generate as much money as possible. So the singer of the Boomtown Rats uses his contacts within the music world and has the rock promoters Harvey Goldsmith and Bill Graham organize two simultaneous concerts in London (Wembley Stadium) and Philadelphia (JFK Stadium), which - a real novelty - are broadcast worldwide on radio and television and flanked by events in South Africa, Germany, Japan and Australia. A global effort financed by multinational media conglomerates.
