As It Happened
 

I used to work at a public broadcasting station in Morgantown, West Virginia, when A&E aired 5 hours of NBC's coverage. At the time, Bill Ryan, on of the anchors of NBC's coverage, was working at our station as the host of a talk show. Bill was one of the most incredible people I have ever met, total professional.
He was getting ready to do the top of the hour radio network newscast when the first bulletin came over the wires. He went to what NBC called a flash studio that had two black and white cameras up and ready for emergencies. At that time during a weekday afternoon, most of the local affiliates were running their own shows or weren't even on the air. It was amazing hearing him talk about that day. He ended up being on the air for 11 hours. If you notice, Chet Huntley left just after Kennedy had been declared dead. Bill said all he could think of when he was on the air was "everything I say has to be correct." William Manchester's "Death of a President" details more of the coverage. My favorite part is when Robert McNeil is phoning in his report from Dallas, and Frank McGhee is relaying what he is saying because of audio problems. To me the thing to take away from this wondering if there are enough network reporters working today that could handle a situation like this. I don't think there are.

I was home from school early that day (due to a faculty meeting) and was at my paternal grandmother’s house. She was watching “As The World Turns” (she was a soap and quiz addict since the days of radio!) and I remember seeing that “BULLETIN” slide come up, Cronkite, etc., on the CBS-TV affiliate. My grandmother started crying and was very upset about this as she was so excited that a Roman Catholic had been elected President. While I understood the religious importance, I also found it interesting as she’d never been able to vote for a President, although she was a natural born citizen. I suppose that I should mention here that I was born and spent my early years in a territory of the U.S., as opposed to a state.

For us, it was a wild afternoon trying to get my mother home from her office at 19th & Pennsylvania Ave. Driving up 18th St next to the EOB and the White House was where traffic started getting hairy and there were cars from CBS, NBC, ABC, Mutual, and several of the local radio stations. The only TV truck to be seen was from WRC-TV. The traffic was held for a bit as a motocade came roaring out of the White House onto Pennsylvania Ave, heading to Andrews AFB. In one of the limos, I distinctly remember seeing Bobby Kennedy and his wife. Of course my Civil Service mother was among those released from work early, but we still didn’t get back home until about the time AF1 had landed at Andrews. I distinctly remember seeing President Kennedy’s casket being lowered from the VC-137 and loaded into a Pontiac ambulance belonging to the Navy.

There was no local color on WRC-TV that weekend as I recall. I remember my Aunt Frances being very upset about that (they “had to be first” in the family with a color set) as she dearly loved President Kennedy.

I’ve also seen the NBC tapes as telecast on A&E. The scene with Frank McGee and Robert McNeil doing a phone patch was a hoot! That crude device looked more like an Arvin or Zenith pocket transistor radio than anything else!

It was indeed a different time compared with what we have today. Back then, the Secret Service had the Presidential Lincoln serviced at O’Brien & Rohall, the Lincoln-Mercury (formerly Edsel, too) dealer in Rosslyn, VA. Which was also the dealership where my parents bought their ’62 Mercury Meteor. You’d see the Presidential limo in their shop periodically. No guards around it or anything. I even got to sit in it once. In the back seat. The same spot where JFK was sitting that afternoon…

As for the “quality” of broadcast journalism being able to competently report impartially and factually a smiliar event today, is a matter for debate. I think a worthy academic exercise in that regard would be to compare coverage of the “Challenger” and “Columbia” shuttle accidents.

I think for my generation, the assassinations of the sixties, Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon, and 9/11 will be the “Pearl Harbor” in terms of “I remember where I was…”

I think they did as good a job reporting as could be expected during extremely difficult circumstances...Nobody had tried to take a shot at the President since, what, 1933 or so ? There was the incident in 1950 w/Puerto Rican nationalists, but that was stopped at the White House gate.

Have they all retired since 9/11?

Murphu222, thanks for sharing that story...I was certainly impressed with Ryan's work that day.

And I intend to tape as much of it as I can onto VHS (I don't trust PVR's still as they seem to fail at the worst of times).

I'll also chime in and say that the coverage does seem to have some heavy artifacts, even by 1963 standards. I agree that they did a great job with covering the incident, but those cameras seem to be of terrible quality

The JFK events broadcast live looked okay on our '62 Silvertone 23-incher! I saw Oswald take it in the belly through the eyes of an 8-year old! 50 years is a long time for a recording - film or videotape - so some degradation is to be expeted. I have seen some old Dick Clark footage of bands on the beach just 3 years newer where the camera had very bad horizontal linearity. Video quality became better over time, now we're so darn spoiled if it's not in HD we have a cow...

I think I mentioned this in another forum at VK. Never forget that day, was 17 and in study hall when the first news came over the P.A. system. Damp windy fall day in Milwaukee. Watched the coverage after school, was a Friday, I think. Watched the killing of Oswald live on TV over the weekend. Monday was declared a national day of mourning, no school. Watched the entire funeral like everyone else at the time. The nation was in shock, as I was. My parents had a black and white TV so don't know if there was color coverage. If there was, it had to be limited in 1963.

I to rank the Kennedy assassination, the first moon landing, the Challenger accident and 911 as the most memorable events in my life time. I have vague memories of Queen Elizabeth's inauguration on TV. First images from Telstar was a big deal. After this post will probably remember more events ...

For me, the memories that stick in my mind was the attempted assassination of President Reagan, The Moon Landings, the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger and of course, 9-11. BTW, I remember the words "live via satellite" meant a great deal as well as "in color." I even remember "In Stereo <<< where available >>>" :)

Besides the September 2001 attacks (which can probably only be compared to the Pearl Harbor attack), the biggest news event I remember was the day Mayor Daley died, in 1976. That is an indication of how powerful he and his political machine were in Chicago, where I was a teenager at the time.