Picking a start time that's merely inconvenient for everyone equally is the easy part of producing a global event. The harder part is everything downstream of that decision — who's presenting live, who's watching a recording, what happens to Q&A when half the audience is asleep, and whether the connection from each office can actually carry the broadcast.
Decide what has to be live, and what doesn't
Not every region needs to watch in real time. A common, workable pattern: the core broadcast runs live for the regions where it's a reasonable hour, gets recorded cleanly, and goes out as an on-demand version — with local-language captions if needed — for everyone else within hours, not days.
Plan connectivity per location, not just at headquarters
The broadcast is only as reliable as its weakest office connection. Each remote presenter or watch-party location needs its own tested link — ideally two, with a cellular or bonded backup — rather than assuming "the internet" will hold up the same way everywhere.
Build in a real handoff plan
When a presenter in one time zone hands off to a colleague twelve hours away, that's a produced moment, not an improvised one: a clean camera and audio chain at both ends, a program return feed so each side can see and hear the other properly, and a rehearsal that actually happens before the real thing.
Give every region a way to ask questions
A moderated Q&A queue that pulls from chat, email, or a web form — not just whoever is awake enough to unmute — means the audience in the "off" time zone still gets heard, even if their question gets read out by a moderator instead of asked live.
The takeaway
A global broadcast succeeds or fails on the parts nobody in the audience sees: the connectivity plan for each site, the recording and captioning workflow for whoever isn't watching live, and a rehearsed handoff between presenters who have never shared a stage. Get those right and the time-zone problem mostly disappears.
See town hall live streaming and hybrid event production for how we plan this for companies with teams spread across regions.