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NBC airing 1963 Meet the Press with Martin Luther King

Cool. I haven't watched MTP in a while, but I liked when they showed classic clips. Also like when Fox News shows Movietone segments.
 
I'm surprised NBC is letting people see how watered-down and dumbed-down the show has become.
 
MCarney said:
NBC will air the August 25, 1963 edition of Meet the Press with Dr. King this weekend on their 10 O&O stations as well as New England Cable News (check local listings). It's too bad they couldn't air it on the whole network. This was shortly before the March on Washington and the "I Have a Dream" speech.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/nb...press-featuring-dr-martin-luther-king_b101350
Click to expand...

Three days, in fact, before Dr. King delivered his famous speech.

As to the comment that NBC is letting us see how "watered-down and dumbed-down" "Meet The Press" has become, the program adopted its present format in response to ABC's "This Week," which dispensed with the concept of four panelists questioning the week's guest. "Face The Nation" took a little longer, but Bob Schieffer, at least, hasn't "dumbed down." Frankly, I haven't watched "Meet The Press" since Tim Russert's death; for whatever reason I'm no fan of David Gregory.

Or maybe America has "dumbed down" since 1963.
 
From 1958, when NBC O&O WRC-4 in Washington (which has been home to "Meet The Press" since it came to television in 1947) went "all color" for local live/tape studio programs, "Meet The Press" has been broadcast in "living color" (except for some instances from 1958 to the late sixties when the program occasional originated from other locations where color facilities weren't available).

I believe that virtually no "Meet The Press" editions prior to the early 1970's still exist in color, so what will be rebroadcast this Sunday (August 25th) will be a black-and-white kinescope.

I had heard an urban legend that besides Dr. King, there was another guest in a separate segment who claimed there would be riots started by the "N-Worders" (and by "N-word, I mean what was the common reference for black/African-American people of the era and not the derogatory term for them).

Guess I'll have to watch.

Fun fact: "Meet The Press" began on radio in 1945......on Mutual (and in fact was produced by it's original sponsor, American Mercury magazine)! The TV version wound up on NBC because Mutual had no TV network. Eventually, NBC purchased the program and since then, it has been produced by NBC News. American Mercury editor Lawrence Spivak remained with the show, eventually becoming moderator in 1965 when the then-moderator, NBC News correspondent Ned Brooks, retired.

At the same time, "MTP" moved from it's longtime slot of Sundays at 6 P.M. EDT/EST to Sunday mornings (or early afternoons on the East Coast for a number of years in the 1960's and 1970's). I suspect the time change occurred because many NBC stations on the East Coast had begun local early-evening newscasts on Sundays and were bumping "MTP" to a delayed-broadcast basis, usually at 11:15 or 11:30 P.M. EDT/EST (after the late local news).

So the March On Washington preview on August 25th, 1963, at least on many of NBC's Eastern and Central Time Zone stations, was broadcast an hour prior to to the start of prime-time.
 
Meet The Press got moved to Sunday morning because Sunday evening fringe time could be sold locally. Few stations did local early news on Sundays at this point but they found they could sell the time for local shows (or syndicated shows) in the hour before prime time, which started at 7pm. In 1961 NBC picked up Disney (The Wonderful World of Color) starting at 7:30, and in 1965 picked up the AFL, so avails between the two became more valuable.

Lawrence E. Spivak was publisher of The American Mercury (started by H.L. Mencken) and started the show to publicize the magazine. He co-owned the show with Martha Roundtree, who was the original moderator. The two had some kind of falling out and he bought out her interest in the show. A couple of years later, he sold the show to NBC in a capital gains deal.

Ned Brooks was not an NBC News correspondent. He worked free-lance. He appeared as a "reporter" on Three Star Extra, weeknights on NBC Radio but this program was produced and written by the sponsor's (Sunoco) ad agency.

NBC was the only network pushing color because their parent, RCA, owned the color system and made color sets. But they made some funny choices about what shows to do in color. Who cares if Meet The Press is in color? Not the kind of show that is going to get people running out to pay big bucks for a color set. When NBC started started Bonanza and then Disney, both deliberately intended to show off color, that interest in color started to grow.
 
And when "Meet The Press" aired at 6 (ET), CBS ran "The
Twentieth Century" at the same time from, I believe, 1961
until "Meet The Press" moved to early Sunday afternoons
in 1965. And for two years (1963-65) "GE College Bowl"
was "Meet The Press"'s lead-in. ABC got in on some of this
in 1962, rerunning "Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years"
at 6:30. Sunday afternoons sure aren't what they used to be.
 
Looks like KARE (Minneapolis/St. Paul), not a NBC O and O, is also running it at 12:30pm, pre-empting a fascinating informercial for a product or service I so desperately need.
 
Joseph_Gallant said:
From 1958, when NBC O&O WRC-4 in Washington (which has been home to "Meet The Press" since it came to television in 1947) went "all color" for local live/tape studio programs, "Meet The Press" has been broadcast in "living color" (except for some instances from 1958 to the late sixties when the program occasional originated from other locations where color facilities weren't available).

I believe that virtually no "Meet The Press" editions prior to the early 1970's still exist in color, so what will be rebroadcast this Sunday (August 25th) will be a black-and-white kinescope.

I had heard an urban legend that besides Dr. King, there was another guest in a separate segment who claimed there would be riots started by the "N-Worders" (and by "N-word, I mean what was the common reference for black/African-American people of the era and not the derogatory term for them).

Guess I'll have to watch.

Fun fact: "Meet The Press" began on radio in 1945......on Mutual (and in fact was produced by it's original sponsor, American Mercury magazine)! The TV version wound up on NBC because Mutual had no TV network. Eventually, NBC purchased the program and since then, it has been produced by NBC News. American Mercury editor Lawrence Spivak remained with the show, eventually becoming moderator in 1965 when the then-moderator, NBC News correspondent Ned Brooks, retired.

At the same time, "MTP" moved from it's longtime slot of Sundays at 6 P.M. EDT/EST to Sunday mornings (or early afternoons on the East Coast for a number of years in the 1960's and 1970's). I suspect the time change occurred because many NBC stations on the East Coast had begun local early-evening newscasts on Sundays and were bumping "MTP" to a delayed-broadcast basis, usually at 11:15 or 11:30 P.M. EDT/EST (after the late local news).

So the March On Washington preview on August 25th, 1963, at least on many of NBC's Eastern and Central Time Zone stations, was broadcast an hour prior to to the start of prime-time.
Click to expand...

MTP is broadcast from the same studio where the high school quiz "It's Academic" comes from (I've been in that studio several times, and the MTP set is behind one set of the "It's Academic" audience bleachers). Another thing that ties these two shows together is that "It's Academic" creator Sophie Altman helped bring MTP to television from radio, as you can see on this web page:

http://www.itsacademicquizshow.com/history
 
That 1963 "Meet The Press" broadcast also had Roy Wilkins as
a guest. It will air in New York at 10 AM Sunday, and in Los
Angeles at 9 AM (PT).
 
Watching the MTP interview with Dr. King and Mr. Wilkins will be fascinating. I've seen clips of it before. It's also disappointing that we'll only be seeing a black and white kinescope because as had been mentioned earlier, there are no color videotape recordings of the older programs from the early 60's, even though they were originally broadcast in color. I wish someone like C-Span or some other network would broadcast original coverage of the march itself. NBC and CBS both carried several hours of live coverage.
 
March On Washington TV Coverage Notes

Johnnya2k6 asked: said:
I wonder who "Face the Nation" and ABC's "Issues and Answers" (the precursor to "This Week") had also on August 25, 1963...
Click to expand...

According to back issues of the Boston Globe:

* "Face The Nation" was off the air during the Summer of 1963, but the August 18th, 1963 edition of the Globe reported that the program would return on Sunday, September 15th. In fact, the paper's TV writer, Elizabeth Sullivan quoted a story in Variety claiming that Ed Murrow (who had left the U.S. Information Agency) would return to TV, possible rejoining CBS to moderate "Face".

Of course, Murrow's health deteriorated, and he died less than two years later.

* According to the August 25th, 1963 Globe, Milton Eisenhower appeared on "Issues And Answers" that day, and the show was seen at 2:30 P.M. on newly-launched ABC affiliate WTEV-6 (now WLNE) in New Bedford/Providence. In those days, the then-ABC station in Boston, the old WNAC-7, didn't carry the program. It was usually on noncommercial WGBH-2, but not on this particular week----WGBH instead was carrying live coverage of the finals of the Longwood Tennis tournament held near Boston, something they did for many years.

Sullivan also wrote on August 18th that "all three networks" would go "all out for live coverage" of the August 28th march.

Based on the August 28th Globe, here's the schedule of planned live TV coverage by network (all times EDT):

ABC: 9:30-9:45 A.M., 10:30-10:35 A.M., 11-11:05 A.M., 11:30-11:35 A.M., 12 Noon-12:30 P.M., 2-2:25 P.M., 4:30-5 P.M.

CBS: 10-10:30 A.M., and 12 Noon-12:30 P.M. (the Globe did not list any live coverage on that network after 12:30; but I suspect there was some).

NBC: 2-2:25 P.M., and 4:30-5 P.M. (I also suspect that in the end, NBC carried more live coverage than that).

All three networks carried wrap-ups that evening; CBS's was in prime-time from 7:30 to 8:30 P.M., ABC had a half-hour from 11:15 to 11:45 P.M., and NBC had 45 minutes from 11:15 P.M. to 12 Midnight.

Since I was a small child at the time, I may be wrong about this, but I thought that in the end, all three networks pretty much "blew out" their program schedules that day between 10 A.M. and 5 P.M. EDT and each of them carried about seven hours of live coverage.

But if my memory is wrong and the TV networks didn't go wall-to-wall for six or seven hours that day, the most extensive coverage would have been on radio, and on WGBH-89.7, which according to the August 28th Globe, was on nonstop from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. with live coverage (likely produced by an "educational" FM station in Washington and made available to other noncommercial radio stations, including WGBH).
 
FredLeonard said:
NBC was the only network pushing color because their parent, RCA, owned the color system and made color sets. But they made some funny choices about what shows to do in color. Who cares if Meet The Press is in color? Not the kind of show that is going to get people running out to pay big bucks for a color set.
Click to expand...

Ah, but the politicians who appeared on it...I bet they liked being in Living Color. I suspect it was a strategic choice.
 
In fact, I have all five and a half hours of live coverage from CBS, which was the only network that went wall to wall from start to finish. Roger Mudd anchored the coverage from the Lincoln Memorial. NBC was on for a good part of the afternoon, but not nearly as long as CBS, and ABC did cut-ins lasting about five minutes in length except for a wrap up that followed the conclusion of the march that was anchored by Washington correspondent Richard Bate, who was also at the Lincoln Memorial. As far as evening wrap-ups of the day's events, all three networks carried specials, but NBC's, which was hosted by Frank McGee, was especially moving because it was edited so well and included so much in the way of speeches, music and context. It's sad that we won't see any rebroadcasts of that coverage from any network because none of them would be allowed to show Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech...not without writing a very large check to the King family.
 
I was struck by the level of civility by all the participants.
When a panelist was asking a question, no one interrupted;
when either Dr. King or Roy Wilkins was answering, no one
butted in. Far cry from today's "roundtable" approach, not
only on "Meet The Press" but on talk shows in general, where
everybody talks at once and viewers are left with no sense of
what was said.

If I know Lawrence Spivak, he would never have allowed everybody
to talk at once; this is the same person who once admonished a guest
who was slouching in his chair to "sit up straight!". But it also says something
about the way times have changed; we are a less civil society on the whole,
and somewhere along the way somebody decided that "in your face" makes
good television.

I hope, come November, that "Meet The Press" can find at least one of
JFK's pre-presidential appearances. I also hope NBC makes the 1963
broadcast with Dr. King available to the public; it would be great to show to
American history classes.
 
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