The 42nd Academy Awards were presented April 7, 1970, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California.

This was the first Academy Award ceremony intended to be broadcast via satellite worldwide, but according to Klaus Lehmann, a foreign sales executive of the ABC television network, in addition to Canada and Mexico (countries which had broadcast the event since 1953, and carried it live since 1964), only two South American countries, Chile and Brazil, roughly in the Oscars' time zone, were interested in the live coverage.

Starting in 1974, the Brazilian TV rights to the Oscars were sold by NBC (which had acquired the TV rights to the Awards from ABC to be broadcast for a five-year period until 1975, when they returned to ABC for the next year's Awards) to Rede Globo.

An early attempt to change the Academy Awards presentation's start time to 1 p.m. to fit European television audiences was rejected by AMPAS executives.

Since at the time television standards conversion was difficult, about 50 other countries did not broadcast the event live.