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What were you watching when.....?

To me, 9/11 was the "JFK event" of my lifetime. I can't remember what i was watching, but i put the TV on ABC really quickly, and they started a special report for the entire network. When Peter Jennings took over at the anchor desk, i knew this was a really big story.
 
oldschooler1 said:
I really should be doing work, but....

I was 7 when MLK Jr. was shot. I for some reason want to remember watching ABC that night, and my mother and teen sister gasping when the buletin came on...And I DO remember the way the anchor said it---"Martin Luther King, is dead." Then we watched the funeral in school, second grade...

That same year, I remember watching on TV Bobby Kennedy's funeral train, and my then 17 year old sister describing to me, a little kid, why he was so special..And she started crying...

Summer of '72, late, LATE at night (there was nothing else on---EVERYONE carried the conventions), watching George McGovern try to give some kind of "'victory/post-acceptance speech" speech outside the Miami convention center, and poeple wouldn't stop shouting, so he couldn't talk...Indeed, what was an 11 year old doing up, watching convetions? Hhey, it interested me.

Watergate...Oh, yea...Watching Dan Rather, a reporter on the CBS Evening News, try to do a reenactment demonstrating how Nixon's secretary's foot COULD HAVE hit a foot pedal, erasing some 18 minutes of tape...Wathcing the hearings during the day...Summer of '74, I clearly remember watching the house judiciary committee voting on aerticles of impeachment, knowing it was a big deal, watching the members saying "aye"...That Thursday night, August 8th, him resigning...That friday morning, him crying in front of his staff, and all the stuff we've now seen over and over again on videotape, but I clearly remember that Friday, it was warm and humid, watching Ford take the oath...The "instant special" NBC ran that Friday night, in my grandparents basement, watching it on a console black and white...John Chancellor recapped how the week unfolded, and for each day's events (monday, tuesday, wednesday, etc.) they replayed the opening of the NBC Nightly News, and the lead story, and how it was given...

Summer '75---american astronauts and russian cosmonauts docking their ships in space---remember that? A weekday afternoon, hanging out with friends, watching it on a little portable B & W in a gameroom basement...I remember thinking how crystal clearr the pictures were from space, still thinking about fuzzy pictures from the moon...That's an accomplishment no one ever mentions---post-apollo, pre-shuttle...

Election night 1976...It was soooo funny---watching Walter at the desk, and this hand comes up from behind the desk, and places a paper on it---like a disembodied hand (you knew someone was under the desk, handing notes to him---but the way it happened, just this hand....!

College library, November, 1978----they had these study carrolls where you could watch a small set w/ headphones (they were those portable B & W GE models that GE made millions of, and every school and college had tons of them, and TV crews and studios used them for monitors--you'd know it if you saw it)..........Jessica Savitch anchorring NBC nightly news, the Sunday night before thanksgiving....Their lead story: an NBC film crew getting shot, trying to leave Jonestown. I remember the film camera falling over on its side, on the runway, under the wing of the plane...as the photog got shot...Savitch says "let's watch it again"... After that, back on-cam, she locks youur eyes with hers, glares at the camera, and just says..."Incredible". Then each day, the death toll from the koolaid grew by a hundred each day, as they found bodies under bodies....

Lennon getting shot--I was already in bed, but my roomate came home from the library and knocked on my door and told me...A LOT of poeple learned from Howard Kosell on Monday night football --the cammera, holdng on a sideline shot of some player, his stats up, Kosell saying "DEAD ON ARRIVAL!"...(I got that moment on tape, from some MTR special in the early 90s)...That night, some FM stations went to playing all Lennon and beatles...94 Rock in Syracuse, at the time running the Burkhart-Abrams superstar format (akinda top 40 AOL format), could not break format....The jock crying on the air, and having to say "comign up next, the blues brothers" with tears in her voice...(Dateline, in a 25-years-later special, ran about 5 seconds of the moment that Chuck Scarborough updated WNBC-TV vieewers that night..., ,and somewhere, I still have on tape one of the very first VCR's (voicer) that ABC radio did shortly after it happened)...
How the next day, Walter led with it----"Good evening, tonight, the news from Washington, Moscow and Warsaw is all overshadowed by the death of a man who sang, and played the guitar..." He said with just a hint of contempt for the lead...I got it on tape, too!

Who remembers the 14 minutes of silence the following Sunday, observed by SOME stations, in his memory?

The first shuttle landing--I was student teaching, we watched it in the classroom, my mentor teacher and I cheered when it landed (we were both apollo children), and the kids, emotinless, looked at us like "are you crazy?". The teacher and I both knew how we felt about space-age accomplishments.....

Reagan getting shot---I heard about it first on the radio, from UPI radio news on an NPR affiliate (waaaaaay before NPR did hourly newscasts), when it was JUST breaking, it had JUST happened, in their 1PM 'cast...All they could give it was a few lines---that's all they knew! driving through town from campus in my '67 Mustang...Watching TV that day, I remember Frank Reynolds pounding the desk at one point, saying "lets get it confirmed, dammit!" or something like that...(ABCnews.com used to have a link up to that afternoon's coverage, don't know if they still do)...

And flight 103...getting blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, Dec. 20, 1988...Running errands in town before we drove to Florida a day or two later for Christmas---hearing CBS News at the top of the hour, 3PM...The anchor reporting "a flight has dissappeared off the radar"...but thatt was all they could say, and would say, for that moment, the story was that fresh...

I'll leave it at that.
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Yeah, i remember flight 103...Sitting in my living room, watching the soap opera Santa Barbara when Tom Brokaw broke in and said that "a flight has disappeared off the radar"... but that's all he could say. They cut back to Santa Barbara for a while, since the story was that fresh... an hour later, i was watching the courtroom drama Superior Court, when Dan Rather came on and said that flight 103 had crashed...because a bomb exploded on board! I was shocked to say the least.

Avianca Flight 52...I was watching some movie on ABC, when Ted Koppel broke in and said that the plane had crashed...Later on during a rerun of Night Court Ted Koppel broke in again, and they showed footage of the plane, obliviously having crashed, but also showing the fact there were survivors. A year later, i saw an episode of On Scene: Emergency Response that was devoted to the rescue of those that survived the plane crash...
 
The Newtown school massacre. 14 days before Christmas 2012, I was working here at RSM when the TVs in the office announced that there'd been a shooting an elementary school in Connecticut. It was a devastating tragedy, to say the least. It was all over the news that night and the next morning. It really struck me when the kids sang "Silent Night' on Saturday Night Live" the next evening.
 
The 2015 San Bernardino Attacks I remember the first time I saw that attack was on ABC News app and it was a direct Feed from KABC 7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOROQeimows

KABC7 helicopter was trying to track down which area was pursuit within the Inland Empire at first before they realized that they were filming the aftermath of the shootout and was aired nationwide at that point. During the time of the film they could not connect the shootout in other parts of San Bernardino to the County building shootout not far from the clip seen here.

Also this took place 2-3 weeks after the 2015 France attacks.

The 2015 Shooting of two WDBJ staff members in Virginia that was crazy. I didn't even realize that the murderer lived in my neighborhood. I didn't realize that the police was giving protection to TV news trucks and staff from Sacramento and Bay Area and that was not some insane unrelated pursuit. at that point they feared retaliation from Vester Flanagan Supporters at that point.

http://abc7news.com/news/vallejo-residents-say-virginia-shooting-suspect-was-polite-educated/958422/

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/article/NH/20150826/NEWS/150829881
 
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The Orlando Shooting recently was the saddest breaking news event for me, because the event hit me emotionally close to home, as Orlando is a few mIles away from Tampa Bay.
 
blackgold said:
The Newtown school massacre. 14 days before Christmas 2012, I was working here at RSM when the TVs in the office announced that there'd been a shooting an elementary school in Connecticut. It was a devastating tragedy, to say the least. It was all over the news that night and the next morning. It really struck me when the kids sang "Silent Night' on Saturday Night Live" the next evening.
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I remember that too. Was watching Days Of Our Lives when Lester Holt broke in and announced that there'd been a shooting an elementary school in Connecticut. It never occurred in my school, so I was shocked about that interrupt. Obama's address was the most emotional TV I've seen too. Two days later, NBC moves the Patriots-49ers game for the Presidents remarks at a service in Newtown.
 
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Someone mentioned Tropical Storm Allison hitting Houston. 36 inches of rain fell at some places. One Houston locale got 7 inches in one hour. I watched TV and it was incredible. 911 went down. Evacuation centers flooded. Hospitals lost power or flooded or both. Phone service was spotty at best. You literally could not drive anywhere, every road was impassible within maybe a mile or so. Police were stranded. Fire and rescue was too. The TV stations took call from residents. I remember one. It was a frantic young mother with three children under 5. They were on a bed and the water was up to the top of the bed. She had tried 911 for a couple of hours but couldn't get through. The anchor announced her address on air and asked anyone who might have a boat to go get her. Finally the TV studio flooded. The station relocated, maybe to a mobile unit (seems they had a nicely elevated parking area). About every 30 minutes they'd go dark, hearing only audio as battery packs were replaced. Cars and even 18 wheelers were bobbing in the freeways that looked like a canal system versus roadway.

I recall being on the air when things happened with the People's Temple in Guyana. I was on the air when Reagan was shot, when John Lennon died, when the Challenger exploded, etc. I was standing in the studio as the News Director announced the start of the Iranian/Gulf war. I even got jumped on for saying "on the news, next, a daring attempt to free the hostages in Iran". My boss said I was editorializing, an extreme 'no-no' in his book.

Likely one of the most raw breaking news I ever saw was when the Weather Channel rolled up on the Joplin, Mo. tornado right as emergency workers were getting there (ie: maybe 2 or 3 minutes after the twister went through). The reporter choked up on air. I probably would have too.
 
Stanislav said:
Of course, many Americans first heard about Lennon on Monday Night Football when Howard Cosell announced the sad news. Chronologically, I believe this was the first mention of the incident on network TV. (I imagine some local NYC stations may have broken in earlier, though.) Lennon had, of course, not long before dropped by MNF during a game and Cosell chatted with him on the air; despite Cosell being about as far from a Beatles fan as one could get, it is said that he enjoyed chatting with the rocker, and was genuinely upset at the news of his shooting.

There's a blog somewhere on the net that has an audio file recorded the night Lennon died, in which he just ran tape while he did an FM bandscan in NYC. Almost every single station regardless of its usual format was running either news of the shooting or Beatles/Lennon music in tribute -- as I recall the only exceptions were one classical station and a couple of Spanish ones.
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Great story done a few years ago by ESPN on the Sunday Morning "Outside the Lines" which has some great off air audio before they come back and make the announcement as well as the story of how ABC News was able to get the story so quick.(A little spoiler here, not how you would expect to get a major news story)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-F3MJjcRkc
 
A lot of recent breaking news events within the past two years was via apps.
I saw the 2015 San Bernardino attacks via ABC News app where ABC News provided a direct feed from KABC 7 Los Angeles.

The November 2015 Paris attacks was via Sky News app and CBSN app.

The 2016 Orlando attack was seen on the CBSN app.

In recent years I went directly to apps to get Breaking news including the Oroville Dam disaster in 2017 I got that via Newson app where they had a contract to air Hearst Owned stations like KCRA Sacramento and that got international attention the next day where BBC News said "America's tallest dam cause evacuations"

Film on app to pick up the 2017 London Attacks from BBC News.
 
During the 2014 Quake in the Napa/American Canyon area I was listening to the radio with KCBS 106.9 FM and this was when most were doing initial calls over where it was felt and I didn't realize I was only 5 miles away from the epicenter. This was one of the first events when drones became used to provide video from that disaster that TV stations. Ever since the 2014 quake in the Wine Country you have stringers and TV stations for their areas just in case they have something similar to a 6.0 and above quake.
 
Yep, this story is terrible, but it is getting top coverage because of the location. This is a media problem, but also a viewer problem. Would this story have been covered if it happened in Grand Rapids, Cedar Rapids, or Rapid City? My point is this is a local story, but becomes national when the media connects it to previous events. Not sure what the answer is here.
 
seatownmedia said:
Yep, this story is terrible, but it is getting top coverage because of the location. This is a media problem, but also a viewer problem. Would this story have been covered if it happened in Grand Rapids, Cedar Rapids, or Rapid City? My point is this is a local story, but becomes national when the media connects it to previous events. Not sure what the answer is here.
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I only see the local clips first since I'm in California that's going to get top coverage here simply because the shootings happen to be compared to the 2015 incident. But more local outlets are saying domestic problems are under investigation at this time.
 
RFK- my grandad was watching NBC's coverage. Frank McGee kept talking and talking, rather than throwing it to the Tonight Show. My grandad was suspicious about that; he said something to the effect of "maybe there were shots fired." He was right; McGee reported that a few minutes later.

9/11- was watching a rerun of Little House on the Prairie while my mom was watching GMA. It was when i switched from Little House to ABC, that i knew that something was wrong.

Shuttle explosion- i remember i was watching the game show Scrabble on NBC when John Palmer of the Today show interrupted the show. When i saw he footage, my mom was really horrified, since a teacher was on board. I knew without being told that no one had survived.

Gulf War- We were watching the ABC News when Peter Jennings interrupted the newscast to break in over the entire ABC network. Of course a lot of people remember Bernard Shaw on CNN when it happened.

I heard about Columbine in school- we were listening to the NPR station, WCQS of Asheville at the end of the day when whoever was at the NPR news desk broke in.
 
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