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.
I am sure they have tried to blame Republicans for it
I was 13 in 1963, and I recall that all the stations signed off the air around midnight with a film of a jet (”my wings touched the face of God”) or the American flag and then showed the Indian test pattern starting around 5:30 am as they warmed up their cameras before beginning broadcasts at 6 am.
The MSM’s division of Proletainment (’Hollywood’) is often the lefty’ worst enemy. I remember seeing a piece of agit-prop, a movie called ‘Pleasantville’ that purported to show how vapid the ‘50s were to the world offered (presumably) by the Democrats.
The movie actually changed, Wizard of Oz-like, from black-and-white to color as the characters discovered the joys of liberality.
This was one of the things that helped me become a right-thinker, keeping in mind that we were neck-deep in Boy Clinton I believe at that time.
So now we’re enjoying the fruits of that personal ‘liberty’: no borders, a putrid kultursmog (Tyrell), no budget and an exponentially expanding debt/unemployment rate, a perpetually aggrieved ‘underclass’ supported by a maligned productive class cognizant of something called a “knockout game” (yes, the same MSM actually calling it a game) and the perpetrators are always simply disaffected youths. Enough rant.
Yeah, these are the wonder years all right. Good job Democrats.
They could have made a run at it with some solid programming, but the other guys had more money to put into the entertainment shows.
Dumont had boxing and they probably could have made a run as a sports channel.
It's actually refreshing to hear history as it happened rather than how we are now told it happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL-KCFbIpA
The station/network logo is also there to “burn” the show so if it’s illegally aired, they’ll know where it came from.
John Kenneth Gailbraith actually made a similar accusation at the time.
It’s in Manchester’s book.
The Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963 by William Manchester
Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith was a liberal (actually, socialist) member of the Kennedy administration. On the afternoon of the assassination, before he knew that Oswald had been arrested, he told Arthur Schlesinger:
“We let the Right inject this poison in the American bloodstream — and this is the result.” (William Manchester, Death of a President, p. 354)
Cronkite kept harping on the a “Right Wingers” attacking Adlai Stevenson in Dallas just a few weeks before the assassination. So they just *knew* it had to be right wingers that killed JFK.
Today - it seems like he was only President ever killed or died in office. How the nation changed and all this other crap. Good lord, the nation changed when Lincoln was shot. The nation changed when McKinley was shot. The nation changed when Harding died in office. The nation changed when FDR died in office. It changed because the personnality of the man taking over as President made it change. No one mentions that Kennedy's Presidency was a failed one.
Enough already!
Galbraith remarked to Schlesinger, “We let the Radical Right
inject this poison into the American bloodstream and this is the result.”
Almost all of the White House family assumed that the assassination had been the work of the Radical Right.
Later that day, Schlesinger echoed the thought, “You know,
the Radical Right has never been taken seriously in this
country.
http://www.davekopel.org/schlesinger/Schlesinger-chapter-9.pdf
I have seen the media mention a full page ad by Republicans a week before as a possible incitement. As if a commie thought JFK was too liberal or something
From the historic film CBS showed, they called him “Lee Harold Oswald” a few times. Means nothing, they obviously did not have his name down yet but interesting to hear nonetheless.
General Walker ran as a Democrat for Governor in Texas.
“In February 1962, Walker entered the race but finished last among six candidates in a Democratic primary election that was won in a runoff election by John B. Connally, Jr., the choice of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Walker
Who were the “radical right” back then?? A lot of Democrats were I would think.
I won't go into whether he acted alone or not. However, the MSM continues to bring up the dominant conservative political culture of the Dallas of that time, as if this fact was somehow to blame for a Marxist shooting at a politically liberal President.
Unfortunately, conservatives do their own version of historical revisionism. Kennedy was as reviled by conservatives 50 years ago as Obama is today, because of his weakness in dealing with the Soviets and the Cuban Communists and his liberal domestic agenda. In the latter case, a coalition of northern and western Republicans and southern Democrats thwarted many of his proposals. Yet Kennedy is made out to be a hero by today's conservatives, because he supported lowering marginal income tax rates.
You forgot to mention that, before that pattern appeared, Perry Como sang “The Lord’s Prayer” while the American flag freely wafted against a blue sky and F-100’s Super Sabres screamed across the TV screeen.
At least in Alabama it did when the state was still referred to as “The Heart of Dixie” instead of that brainlss “Stars Fell on Alamabama” on today’s license plates.
That’s the America I would like to remember but, alas, it is gone forever.
Yes, a lot of conservatives were still Democrats back then. I think “Radical Right” was code for the John Birch Society. But they had nothing to do with it, and the Kennedy worshipers were mightily disappointed when the assassin proved to be a Communist. See here Jackie Kennedy’s quote, also from the Manchester book.
And finally, Jackie Kennedy’s comment to her mother on hearing that a leftist had been arrested for killing her husband:
“He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights . . . . It’s — it had to be some silly little Communist.” (Manchester, Death of a President, p. 407)
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/context4.htm
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.
