The History of Live Streaming

Live broadcasting goes back 100 years ago when Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated it in January 1926.   Soon after on Sept 11, 1928 General Electrics TV station WGY in Schenectady, New York broadcasted the Play “The Queen’s Messenger” Live.

But the first world-wide Live production broadcast occurred on August 14, 1936 during the grand opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics.

This was followed with the BBC launching the world's first regular high definition Live TV service on Nov 2, 1936.   In the United States, regular Live broadcasts began with the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, featuring a Live dedication speech by then president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

For the vast majority of us alive today, we remember the local TV stations' Live News broadcasts which began in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.   Even those early adopters still relied on prerecorded reports from the field.   By the 1960’s, Live anchoring and Live remote field broadcasting had become the standard format.

Over a period of 10 to 15 years, broadcasters realized the significant draw of a Live News show along with its potential.   Many broadcasters over the next 20 years experimented with the Live Show format on other types of shows as well.   One in particular was the format of day time Soap Operas.   The “Live” Soap shows lasted into the early 1970’s.

The one thing about Live Broadcasting was the inordinate cost of the equipment and the requirements of the FCC as everything, at that time, was transmitted and broadcasted over public airwaves.   You as an individual practically and financially could not put together, produce and air a Live Broadcast of your own without Broadcast TV or Millionaire amounts of money and influence.   I have first hand knowledge of this as I tried back in the early 2000’s, and I was not even in a major market area at the time.

But, unbeknownst to most people, in the early days of the “Internet”, what we now call “Live Streaming” was being born in the early 1990’s

Early Days of Live Streaming 1993-2006

To the best of my research the very first “Live Stream” took place at the Xerox PARC in California over the internet using a niche, experimental IP multicast network called “Mbone”, short for Multicast Backbone developed by Van Jacobson, Steve Deering and Stephen Casner in early 1992.

Mbone first debuted in March 1992 at the Internet Engineering Task Force, “IETF” meeting in San Diego.   It was an experimental virtual network built on top of the existing internet to support IP multicast traffic.   It worked but had its limitations.

In February 1997 the technology to Live Stream to a wider audience with video became available in RealPlayer 4.0 which introduced the first widely commercialized Live Video Streaming over the internet.   This evolved out of the RealAudio Player which came out in April of 1995.

Each has their respective pluses and minuses.

Over the next 10 years things were changing, the shift from custom client architectures to “Flash” based ecosystems was the big one as it set the stage for modern web video.

In 1998 some standardization occurred with the adoption of RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) and RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) and RTCP (Real-time Transport Control Protocol), which is a companion to RTP that delivered the actual video data packets.

In 2000 Macromedia officially released the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) which we still use today.

Between the release of RTSP in 1998, the refinement of the core web protocol, HTTP/1.1 in 1999 and RTMP release in 2000 the solid infrastructure of Live Streaming was in place.

For the next 7 years all of the Live Video mad scientists got to work and in 2007 Justin Kan and Emmett Shear introduced Justin.TV which allowed users to broadcast their personal lives, live to the web.   Ustream launched a similar service not long afterwards.

In 2008 YouTube entered the frey by hosting its first Live Stream (YouTube Live) and in April 2011 YouTube officially launched Live Streaming to the public for select creators and later to all accounts in good standing.

Justin.TV spun off its gaming focused section into Twitch and went public with their Live Streaming on June 6, 2011, just a few months after YouTube.

Within just a few years Live Streaming propagated to most Social Media platforms.

FaceBook, Early 2016

Instagram, Dec 12, 2016

Twitter, Initially through “Periscope” in March 2015.   Later Dec 14, 2016 natively through the mobile app.

Linkedin, Initially Feb 11, 2019, later to all qualified to Live Stream

Discord, August 15, 2019

TikTok, Late 2019

Wechat, Mini Programs early 2020

Pinterest, Nov 1, 2021

Tumbler, Dec 2022

Patreon, April 2025

BlueSky, allows external Live broadcast, May, 2025

There are some that have come and gone as well during this period in time such as Vine, Mixer and a number of other social media platforms.

So what is the big take away from all this Live Streaming history?

For nearly a century, “going live” was tightly controlled by expensive equipment, FCC regulations, public airwaves, and institutional gatekeepers.   This meant ordinary people, such as yourself, simply could not produce and distribute a live broadcast.   That scarcity is why live moments such as the Olympics, Presidential speeches, news, and even early soap operas, have carried such cultural weight and influence in the past.

What once required millionaire level resources and influence a mere 20 years ago as the basic buy-in into the world of Live Broadcasting, has shrunk to the level of what most all of us carry in our pockets everyday… your cell phone and the willingness of the Established Content Creator or Business Professional to press the “GO LIVE NOW” button.  

The barriers of finance, connection and influence that once made “Live Broadcasting” an exclusive privilege have fundamentally collapsed with the ushering in of “Live Streaming” on Social Media platforms essentially… FOR FREE. 

Nearly 100 years of history shows that “Live Broadcasts” have always been uniquely powerful at capturing attention and building connection with an audience.  The difference now is that the power is no longer reserved for the few, the wealthy, or the connected.

The Established Content Creators and the Business Professionals who treat “Live Streaming as a serious viable asset, rather than an occasional experiment, will be taking advantage of a capability that previous generations could only dream of accessing.

The technology and platforms are ready and waiting.

The only remaining variable is… YOU!

Just press the button Max!… and get started Live Streaming today.

If you are just starting down the Live Streaming/Podcast path, 

Let's talk and see if I can help you navigate through it all.

Click Here 

Until the next installment...

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