The 1972 Munich Olympics were the first to be broadcast live by global satellite from continent to continent. As the first Games on German soil since Berlin 1936, organisers were keen to use the media to present a postwar liberal image to the world.
In the US, it was ABC sports that held the exclusive licence to broadcast the images. The sleepy crew were in the middle of a night shift, after Mark Spitz took home his seventh swimming gold of the Games, when gunshots rang out through the Olympic village, shortly after dawn.
