George Campey in the London Evening Standard in 1951, when he referred to a BBC programme being relayed by Dutch television; the EBU's Eurovision transmission network was subsequently founded in 1954, at the time formed of a series of microwave links across Europe. In the years following the formation of the EBU a number of big events were transmitted via their infrastructure, including the coronation of Elizabeth II, which was broadcast in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, in addition to the United Kingdom. In September 1953, an EBU meeting in London resulted in a series of international exchange programmes organised the following year, entitled the "European Television Season", and relayed live across Europe through the Eurovision network. The first of these programmes was shown on 6 June 1954, showing coverage of the Narcissus Festival held in Montreux, France, followed by a tour of Vatican City. Further events were broadcast over the following days, including the Palio di Siena, an athletics meet in Glasgow, a parade by the Royal Navy passing Queen Elizabeth II, and live transmission of football matches from the 1954 FIFA World Cup in Switzerland, the first time the FIFA World Cup was accompanied by live television coverage. Following this summer season of programmes, the EBU formed a "Programme Committee" to investigate new initiatives for cooperation between broadcasters each year, with Marcel Bezençon, Director-General of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR), serving as the committee's first President, and Rene McCall, deputy director of the BBC, and Jean d'Arcy, Director of the French broadcaster Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF), serving as Vice Presidents. This committee met in Monte Carlo in January 1955, and approved two new projects for further study: a European song competition, initially proposed by Sergio Pugliese from the Italian broadcaster RAI, and a contest of amateur entertainers; the latter idea was eventually discarded. On 19 October 1955, at the annual General Assembly of the EBU, held in the Palazzo Corsini in Rome under the Presidency of the Director-General of the BBC Sir Ian Jacob, the EBU agreed to the organising of the song contest, under the initial title of the European Grand Prix, and accepted a proposal by the Swiss delegation to host the event in Lugano in the spring of 1956. A planning sub-group was formed to establish the rules of the competition, headed by Eduard Hass of SRG SSR, which used the Italian Sanremo Music