The Concert in Central Park It Be", and executive produced by Lorne Michaels, who had recently departed the NBC-TV comedy/variety series "Saturday Night Live". Simon himself financed the US$750,000 cost of the staging and the video recording. It is unknown how much HBO paid for the television and video rights of the recording; US$1 million according to some sources, over US$3 million according to others. The film includes the two songs that had not appeared on the album, and at 87-minutes, runs 12 minutes longer. HBO televised the film, "Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park", on February 21, 1982, five days after the
Benefit concert performers took part in concerts to raise donations charitable causes, it was also not unusual in the 18th and 19th centuries for musicians to stage performances to raise funds for their own professional work, such as Ludwig van Beethoven's 1808 "Akademie" concert. The modern understanding of a benefit concert is of a large-scale, popular event put on to support a charitable or political cause. In the modern era, the first benefit concert is generally held to be the Concert For Bangladesh, a programme of two events held at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1971, which were organized