November 24, 1963--
Anyone over the age of 50 remembers well the events of November 22-25 of 1963. It was the weekend when a great leader and dejected loser stood equal for a brief moment on the world stage, and the weekend that the breaking news story came to broadcast television.
On Friday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot as he rode in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas; he died shortly thereafter. The thirty-fifth president was forty-six years old and had served less than three years in office. During that short time, Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, became immensely popular both at home and abroad and the nation as well as much of the world was saddened.
For the next several days, regular programming yielded to nonstop coverage of the assassination and funeral. From their living rooms, Americans watched Mrs. Kennedy, still wearing her blood-stained suit, return to Washington with the president's body. News organizations descended on Dallas and reported each new development of the case. Lee Harvey Oswald, a disaffected ex-Marine with a checkered past, was arrested within hours and held in the Dallas City Jail. The city jail was intended only for short stays, and it was decided to transfer Oswald to the more secure Dallas County Jail on Sunday morning. The live cameras of KRLD were feeding images of the transfer in a pool feed sent to the three television networks of the day. However, only NBC carried the transfer live. CBS and ABC were carrying a memorial service when the shooting took place.
Oswald, escorted by two Dallas Police Detectives, stepped off the elevator and proceeded to the station wagon that had been backed into the underground garage to carry him to the county jail. Jack Ruby, a local cabaret owner and benefactor to many police officers, had earlier slipped past guards and positioned himself in the crowd of reporters and cameramen waiting to witness the transfer. When Oswald walked by, Ruby stepped out of the crowd and into history as he shot the alleged assassin at point blank range.
Quickly, the other two networks went back to
live coverage, this time following the Dallas Police as they took the mortally
wounded Oswald to Parkland Hospital. A few hours later, Oswald succumbed
to his wounds, and many of the answers about what happened that day died with him.
Coverage continued throughout Sunday and into Monday the 25th as the funeral took place in Washington D.C.. All other programming was suspended as the fledgling media provided continuous coverage. By the time the events of November 22nd, 1963 played out, television news took the lead from print and radio journalism in the reporting of breaking news actualities.
Coverage continued throughout Sunday and into Monday the 25th as the funeral took place in Washington D.C.. All other programming was suspended as the fledgling media provided continuous coverage. By the time the events of November 22nd, 1963 played out, television news took the lead from print and radio journalism in the reporting of breaking news actualities.
For more reading on this event, go to:
http://www.tvrundown.com/lostfilm.html This Week in Broadcasting History
In October 1963, the network evening news broadcasts expanded from 15 to 30 minutes. News photography was accomplished using 16 mm. film, and satellite transmission of video had not yet been perfected. News film was shot, taken to a local affiliate lab for developing and editing on a movieola using a splicing block and then transmitted over the same cable that delivered the network program feed to the affiliate station using a special modulator provided by AT&T. During periods where the networks were not transmitting programming (such as during local commercial breaks), filmed news stories would be fed across the network where they would be taped at the networks' respective master control facilities for inclusion in the evening news programs.
