Posted on 12/07/2016 3:57:49 AM PST by Nextrush
(Page 9 PDF File) ATTACK FINDS NEWS SETUPS READY...News Organizations Slip Quickly Into Action to Keep Nation Informed
Immediately following announcment last Sunday afternoon that Japanese airmen has attacked American possessions in the Pacific Ocean, the networks swung smoothly into 24-hour wartime operation.......
Flash at Game
WOR, New York at 2:26 p.m (EST) interrupted its description of the Dodger-Giant professional football game to read a United Press flash of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Two minutes later the news was broadcast across the country by the full NBC-Red and Blue newtorks.
CBS inserted the announcement into the 2:30 station break preceeding this network's half-hour Sunday afternoon news roundup, which was hastily reorganized.....
Line Comandeered
Two minutes later, the American public heard the operator break in commandeer the circuit for an urgent military message. But Feldman, hot on the trail of the world's big news story of the day, immediately asked for another circuit and at 4:46 KGU delivered a six-minute eyewitness report of America's first battle with Japan...
(Page 16 PDF file)
TELEVISION DEVELOPS NEW PRESENTATION OF WAR NEWS AS EVENTS OCCUR SWIFTLY
Television, with the outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Japan, stepped up to a new level of importance, with both WNBT, NBC television station and WCBW, video adjunct of CBS, expanding their telecasting schedules...
WCBW, going on the air Dec. 7 with the latest bulletins and visual aids from 8:45 until after 10, marked the first time that it has operated on a Sunday.....
The station carried the speech of President Roosevelt on Monday at the same time that a waving flag was transmitted over the sight waves.....
An AP teletype was installed in the studios of WNBT, and a camera was focused on the copy as it issued from the wires......
(Excerpt) Read more at americanradiohistory.com ...
The two articles that are excerpted can be found at the PDF link on pages 9 and 16.
News of the attack at 1:25pm Washington time was sent by Navy radio to the Navy Department and word was passed to the White House and President Roosevelt.
White House Press Secretary Steve Early held a conference call with news services at 2:23 pm and the word was quickly sent out in bulletins printed on paper via 66 word per minute typing machines used by the news services and installed at media using their services.
The audio files of 1941 radio news from archive.org include many of the radio broadcasts described in the linked article.
I plan to post a link for them in this thread.
Link to audio files with Pearl Harbor Day items 90-157 on the list.......
https://archive.org/details/1941RadioNews
On this subject, here is a link to the World War II plus 70 years thread (has it been five years?) for radio coverage of the attack:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2817271/posts
Thanks for posting. Very interesting. Also interesting that after an event of that magnitude, they make the announcement, and then “we now go back to our regularly scheduled program”.
My Dads one of these guys,wont say which it will blow my cover.
Many interesting articles and docs from that day here in the ole desk:
They did that quite often because the programs the networks aired were on behalf of sponsors who were guaranteed their programs would air with little or no interruption in contracts between the sponsors and the networks.
Most of the special news broadcasts the radio networks aired on December 7, 1941 were in time slots where sponsored programs were not airing.
In some cases sponsors agreed to cut back or cancel their programs.
I assumed it was because of sponsor commitments, but it just sounded somehow odd.
I had to deal with a similar issue in religious broadcasting when I was younger because all the religious broadcasters were ‘sponsored programs’.
A controversy was brewing over religious schools in Nebraska with people under arrest and a school operating in defiance of the state.
Our ‘special reports’ had to go in unsponsored time or had to be inserted as brief announcements between sponsored shows.
A few short years ago, at our old family farmstead in Grey County, Ontario, I found a letter that my grandfather wrote to his mother (my great-grandmother) and it was dated December 7, 1941. No mention of the attack, and I wonder what time of the day he wrote it (he was living in Oakville at the time with Grandma and my Dad’s two older sisters as very small children and my Dad was not born until about seven years later)? Possibly during the middle of the day and I guess news of what was unfolding local Hawaiian time might not have reached Eastern Canada just yet. I know a little off topic, but I think often of that letter whenever I think of Pearl Harbor.
Later
What? No Play-Doh, milk, cookies, and blankies?
bfl
EXACTLY how many televisions were in households in Dec 1941.
A few thousand sets were around New York. Commercial stations licensed in several cities like Chicago, Philadelphia.
The BBC operated a television service in London from 1936-1939 with 20-thousand sets in the south of England by 1939.
The television stations in the USA shut down for the war from July 1942 to January 1944.
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.
