Posted on 11/18/2013 9:13:31 AM PST by Nextrush
Television was the established cutting edge media in 1963 drawing in the young and continuing a rise to its zenith in the decades to come.
Radio and the newspapers had their place in the pecking order but they were on lower rungs.
Television was dominated by three major networks with two of them (CBS and NBC) being the leaders in ratings and advertising dwarfing the third network (ABC) in those statistics.
Cable distribution of television programs was in its infancy and limited mainly to retransmitting over the air stations from the cities to rural areas.
Around 580 analog television stations were broadcasting over the air signals with some using translators and cable systems to reach wider audiences outside their local areas.
Most of the stations affiliated with the three networks with others going it alone in the larger cities as independent stations broadcasting sports, old movies and rerunning old television shows.
A small group of educational television stations operated and they would soon develop and expand in their reach with taxpayers footing the bill. For the moment much of their support came from commercial broadcasters who donated used equipment and made some financial contributions.
Perhaps they were prodded along by government???
That's because the Kennedy Administration's Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow had decried television as a "vast wasteland" in a 1961 speech.
Edward R. Murrow, who had joined the Kennedy Administration as Director of the United States Information Agency, had made a similar speech to television news directors in 1958 causing a stir and friction with his then employer, CBS.
ABC was able to gain some prime time ratings traction in the late 1950's by programming "action" shows with western and crime themes. These new shows revved up the violence and sexual content. The other networks didn't sit still, they countered with their own action shows.
Technology was on the move in 1963 as NBC was inching its way towards a full color television service. The FCC had approved the RCA-NBC color system in the 1950's.
By 1963 NBC gave its viewers an educational hour in color at 6am, an hour or more of daytime shows and an hour or more of prime time shows in color, with the "Tonight Show" also being broadcast in color late at night.
There was no color on CBS and ABC only broadcast a few cartoon shows ("The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons") in color during the 1962-63 season.
NBC would make the full color conversion in the 1965-66 season and the other networks would quickly follow.
The ability of television to cover breaking news live was restricted in 1963 to microwave video links from bulky "mobile units". These tractor trailer or bus sized vehicles would bring studio cameras to field, establish links with a local station and begin sending video as soon as the cameras warmed up. It took studio cameras used in the field (the minicam was not full developed yet for local use) some 20 minutes to warm up so they could be used.
Networks would switch to local station studios for reports on breaking news that would include newsfilm shot in the field by the local stations. Connections from the networks to local stations were telephone company microwave links on the ground stretching thousands of miles across the country.
There were no internet video links in 1963 or satellite links to send video domestically either. The Telstar satellite across the Atlantic provided an intermittent link depending on its orbit. A Pacific satellite video link was about to open up at the time of the Kennedy Assassination.
The test pattern was usually preceded by The Star Spangled Banner.
We had a black-and-white Packard Bell that blew tubes bi-monthly. It had a clunky remote control connected by a clunky cable to the tuner. We have come a long way electronically. Politically, we have come a long way too, down hill.
Not a hero, but any way you slice it, JFK has to be preferred to the disaster who is the Obamanation.
“The hundreds yea thousands of channels or video options we can see today were but a dream.”
and there’s still nothing on.
Video of all three networks’ coverage is here:
http://dvp-video-audio-archive.blogspot.com/2012/03/index.html
Judge for yourself.
And, no, this isn’t my blog.
I don’t have a blog.
President Kennedy could hardly be mistaken for Hubert Humphrey concerning civil rights. Soft on communism? Kennedy was considered a redhot cold warrior. Maybe the Texans really didn’t dislike him so.
Newton Minow is still around, and he and his kids have ties to Obama. He may be one of the last of those characters who seemed to hover around the White House decade after decade whenever a Democrat was there.
I’m telling you what I observed as someone who actually lived during the time in North Central Louisiana, and kept up with the news.
I was ten in 1950 and thirteen in 1963, but I read newspapers, news magazines, and watched network and local news.
Had he lived, the five states that went for Goldwater over LBJ would have gone for Goldwater over JFK, and quite a few more, Texas included. After all, that was Kennedy’s purpose in going to Texas in November of 1963 - it was a CAMPAIGN trip.
That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it.
Indeed, Minnow is still around. A Central Planner from the old school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_N._Minow
Chiefly because they saw him as soft on communism. Some thought he was a socialist, bent on taking the US down the "Fabian Freeway," but it was mostly that he was seen as weak and squishy and easy to push around in foreign affairs. Also, there was intense regional hostility. Kennedy was an Easterner with all those Harvard advisers, rather than a Western cowboy or man of the people.
It's hard to recover exactly what people did and didn't think then. The temptation is to translate it into terms that have currency now --"elitist," "wimp," etc. -- but that may not have been in the air then. But here's a sample:
In October, 1961, Ted Dealey, right wing publisher of the Dallas Morning News, angrily insulted President John F. Kennedy, whom he considered soft on Communism. "We can annihilate Russia and should make that clear to the Soviet government. The general opinion of the grass-roots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle."
Dealey, whose father the famous plaza had been named after, actually had earned a philosophy degree from Harvard 50 years before and had been a crusader against the Klan in the 1920s.
There was definitely something regional and something age-related going on. The Catholic-Protestant thing may have been in the background. I'm not sure race or civil rights was a factor in Dallas (as it most likely was in other parts of the state and the country), except in so far as people like Dealey saw that as part of the whole Communist thing and Kennedy as weak in that area as well.
The Civil Rights issue was definitely a factor in the Deep South States. LBJ was only able to pass the Civil Rights Act because of the martyrdom of JFK.
It never would have passed had JFK remained President.
Again, IMO.
Funny how the memories of youth work. The other day talked to a guy who was 8 and remembered missing “Gilligan’s Island” because of the assasination coverage ... told him I don’t think that was on yet (1964). Then, your post about “I Dream of Jeannie”, which began 2 years later in 1965.
- zig
Well, running for statewide office as a Republican was a fool’s errand. Federal was a different story as there were breakthroughs, as Republican John Tower won LBJ’s Senate seat in 1961 over Tory Democrat Dollar Bill Blakley and GOPer Bruce Alger had been the Dallas County Congressman since 1955 (but lost a decade later in the wake of the assassination when he was explicitly targeted for defeat and blamed for “fomenting right-wing hate” against JFK there).
And you pay someone a lot of money to get all that nothing.....
Yes, that's it!
bump
tis a sad addiction, yes. Actually I do pony up a small extra to get a limited array of channels but I hooked up mainly to get hi speed internet
As recently as Jan. 2, 2000, that had always been the case wherever I lived (I was 38 at the time). The only exceptions being in my dormitory (and later my off-campus residence) when I was in college. On the aforementioned date, we activated our DirecTV (a Christmas gift to my mom and stepdad from from his offspring and I).
ff
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.