What were you watching when.....?

[Tim-In-Houston]

Re: SAD BREAKING NEWS IN TELEVISION HISTORY!

I think the first "Breaking News" I can recall is Reagan being shot, I would have been around 4 years old at the time (I just turned 30 last month). My mother always watched "General Hospital" (the big Luke and Laura years) but it was interrupted that day for coverage.

The next one I recall vividly was Challenger in 1986. Watching the Price Is Right and CBS cutting in with a special report.

1991 Gulf War: Was watching ABC World News Tonight, they dumped out of a taped report by ABC reporter Garry Shephard, their reporter in Baghdad, to go to him live on the phone with the first words of the bombing campaign (still, to this day, CNN gets the credit but it was ABC on the air first). His phone line was cut off not long afterwards and CNN did, indeed, continue broadcasting with their special link put in by Hussein's government.

The one most seared into my mind is 9/11, though. I was getting ready for work, watching KHOU's local/network 7am hybrid waiting for their last local update to come on. CBS with Bryant Gumbel break in about a plane crash in the World Trade Center. I flip over to ABC, but they are in commercial as is NBC (again, its about 7:55am when the locals jump in for an update) then I flip over to KRIV-26 which is carry Fox News directly off the cable feed. About to flip back to ABC when the second jetliner drifts into the chopper shot FoxNews is using and slams into the second tower, with the Fox anchor intoning "we just saw another jetliner hit the world trade center. Another plane just hit the world trade center" over and over again. Though he was drowned out from my screaming the same thing and waking my housemate. We watched it again on the Tivo just to make sure what we were seeing was real.

Locally (to Houston), the 2001 floods from T.S. Allison. Staying with a friend who was housesitting, we went to bed earlier than normal, but I remember waking up throughout the night and hearing nothing but rain and (LOUDLY) croaking frogs. I was working on a city council campaign at the time and got up early on Saturday to do some campaigning. Drove down N. Main street towards Interstate 45 and there were literally thousands of people standing on the sidewalks at just before 8am on a Saturday morning and I could not figure out why...until I turned on the elevated feeder road and freeway entrance at N. Houston Avenue and saw that I-45 was flooded for as far as the eye could see, cars and semis floating gently in the dark water like so many fishing bobbers.

 

[Stanislav]

Discussion of those historic major world events usually lead to that classic question "where were you and what were you doing when...." You know, things like the JFK and RFK assassinations, the Reagan shooting, the shuttle disasters, 9/11, etc.

But since this is a TV-related board, I'll ask: if you happened to be watching TV when any of these (or other) major events broke into programming...what were you watching at the time?

I'm curious, because for some reason, I have a track record of almost never being in front of a TV at the actual moment these things break. To-wit:

JFK (1963) -- TV wasn't on. My grandfather came up from his basement workshop, having heard the news on a small transistor radio he kept there. After some radio monitoring, someone finally turned on the tube to get the straight poop from (of course) Uncle Walter.

RFK (1968) -- Happened in the middle of the night EDT, so I only learned of it the next morning in the paper.

Reagan shooting (1981) -- I was visiting my girlfriend in Gainesville (she was a grad student at UF at the time) and was taking a nap when the news broke. Her roommate told me when I awoke, and I joined the network coverage in progress.

Pope John Paul II shooting (1981) -- On vacation, driving along U.S. 7 on my way from Vermont to New York City. In Connecticut, I made a "comfort stop," and did a quick bandscan on a little 2" portable TV (pre-Watchman), wondering why there was news on in the middle of the afternoon. I soon learned why, and resumed driving while (kids -- don't try this!) continuing to monitor ABC coverage via WTNH-8. (Yes, monitoring TV while driving -- I confess to and repent of this very dangerous practice!)

Challenger disaster (1986) -- Closest I've come to catching the first bulletins, probably within seconds. Woke up just about the time it happened (I had worked all night) and turned on the TV just as Jacksonville's WJXT-4 was switching to CNN coverage. (The story I later learned from a WJXT employee is that they saw the disaster unfold on CNN, waited patiently for CBS to break into the network, then finally got impatient and just broke locally and used CNN's coverage until CBS woke up.)

9/11 attacks (2001) -- On the road again, heading from Orlando to Tampa, and heard the first radio reports on, of all places, the Howard Stern Show. Of course, many radio stations soon switched to TV network audio, and I heard those, but apart from some brief glances at TVs in a couple of Tampa stores as I completed my errands, I didn't "see" any TV coverage until arriving back home late that afternoon. (And the taped video was infinitely more horrendous than those audio reports could convey.)

Columbia disaster (2003) -- Car-less by now, I was walking out the door to the bus stop and tuned my little radio to the local NPR affiliate, just as a local announcer was reporting that "NASA has lost contact with the space shuttle Columbia." I thought "'Lost contact?' That can't be good." So, I aborted my trip and went back inside to join the TV coverage in progress. First thing I saw turning on the set was the video (from WFAA, I think?) of the multiple debris contrails in the sky over Texas. Yup....definitely "not good."

Seems like I'm never in the right place at the right time when these things happen. But if you were in front of the tube when these (or similar) things first broke -- what were you watching at the time that was rudely interrupted, and how?

 

[mleach]

The shootings of John Lennon and Ronald Reagan and the death of Elvis Presley I remember hearing about these events the first time on the radio.

*Elvis Presley....I remember hearing the dj on Winchester, Virginia's WHPL-AM turn down the sound of Leo Sayer's then-hit "How Much Love" ( does anybody remember THAT tune ??? LOL ) to announce Elvis had died. He then went into a commerical for Hardees Hamburgers.

*John Lennon...I was in a Winchester, VA Grand Union store and over the store's PA they were playing Buffalo's WKBW 1520 ( the local stations at the time signed off at 11pm so a lot people in Winchester were listening to KB afterwards ). Yola was the dj and she played the tune "Just Like Starting Over" and said "..that was the late John Lennon who was shot and killed a few hours ago outside his home in New York City...KB Radio 15 will pay tribute to John all night tonight"..then she played #9 Dream followed by, of course..Imagine !!!

*Ronald Reagan...this gets interesting. My mom picked me up from school and she told me what happened. On the way home Winchester's WHPL radio was doing local continous coverage. As soon as I got home I tuned into Baltimore's WBFF-TV and The Flintstones was airing ( part of Captain Chesapeake ). I still remember the episode WBFF aired. It was the one about the Way Outs !! Then halfway in the show..WBFF did a bulletin about the shooting. WBFF showed a slide that said in big black letters "Special report" and I believe the voice over guy was the late Bill LaFever. WBFF had announced that Jim Brady had just died. Of course that bit of news turned out later to be incorrect.

On a similar note to this topic....The 1963 plane crash death of country music star Patsy Cline. I wasn't born yet but my parents over the years told me about the reactions to her death. Winchester, Virginia is the home of Patsy Cline and from what they told me her death was more/less ignored by TV at the time though the local radio stations in the area did provide coverage....actually maybe too much. Winchester's WHPL ( I actually heard of tape of this online some years back )..went as far as describing the condition of not on her body but the others inthe crash too like Hawkshaw Hawkins. It was very graphic and WHPL took some heat over that. Among the towns people half of them were in mourning while the other half sadly was glad she was gone as they felt Patsy Cline was a bit...wild and "trashy". Both my parents were confused as to how they should act. Both of them were very sad she had died but their school teachers, preachers and the "older folks"...around them they couldn't show mourning about the death of a woman who those people simply didn't like.

 

[KML0224]

I was born in 1971 for starters. I can't possibly recall what I was doing at age 6 (living in southern Maine) with Elvis. Sadly, I was already in bed for school (in central Connecticut) when the news of Lennon broke in late 1980. I was coming home from a day in fourth grade at age 10 (1981) when my mother had told me about Reagan. She had been watching her soaps on CBS at the time. I was home sick from school from the flu in January 1986 (back to southern Maine) when the Challenger blew up. I turned the TV on at roughly 11:30 AM and saw the early stages of CBS' coverage. I only saw updates about the Chernobyl disaster (1986) on the evening news. Lastly, as it relates to September 11th, I was at Union Station, the bus and train station in Hartford, leaving for a day trip to Brattleboro, VT. I heard the then-breaking news at 9 AM on WTIC-AM 1080 of Hartford. As our bus was heading up I-91 north towards Springfield, MA, I flipped between WTIC-AM and the audio of WFSB-TV (CBS) channel 3 of Hartford and listened to CBS News until that signal faded out. I didn't see the first images of the towers until I saw a monitor on CNN inside the Springfield bus terminal that day.

 

[Ultimajock]

The assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald: this is the earliest memory I can match up with a date. Just over two months short of my third birthday, my mother and grandmother had the TV on NBC that entire weekend. We were living in a trailer park on the far south side of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and could get both WTMJ-TV/4 Milwaukee and WNBQ*/5 Chicago equally well, but my grandmother was extremely fond of Floyd Kalber, WNBQ's local anchorman, so it was probably set on Channel 5 out of habit. Of course, NBC carried the shooting live, and when we saw it, my mother and grandmother went tapioca, instinctively flipping the dial to an unused channel as if that would prevent me from seeing what I already had. As if I knew precisely what it was right away, which I didn't...

*WNBQ's call sign wasn't changed to WMAQ-TV until the following August.


The death of Elvis Presley: by sheer coincidence, my dad was driving me to a record shop in downtown Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to pick up a copy of The Sun Sessions I'd special-ordered, when I turned on the car radio and heard Jonathan Green on WTMJ Milwaukee talking about the death. Apparently, Green was doing his show from the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis when the news broke, and WTMJ's remote broadcast booth was suddenly swamped by fairgoers who got the news by word of mouth a few minutes before Green got the word from WTMJ's newsroom...


The assassination of John Lennon: throughout that night, my grandmother and I were helping my father deal with a serious health matter, thus we had neither the radio or television on. It wasn't until around 11:00 P.M. Central that I finally turned the TV on, and heard Ray Wheeler of WLUK/11 Green Bay (then an ABC affiliate) announce the headline story on the late newscast...

 

[Andy Coleman]

I am 32 years old. I wasn't alive when kENNEDY was killed. When Reagan was shot I was outside playing . MY parents had a service station at the time and this man drove up who was a friend of my dad's and told us all that President Reagan had been shot. In 1986 when the challenger exploded I was home sick with flu. I was watching NBC game show Scrabble when they broke in telling about the explosion. When Elvis died I was in Montgomery , Alabama At a store that was going out of business when it was announced that he had died. My mom told me this woman fell in the aisle had cried like a baby.During 9/11 I was listening to a radio station here in Dothan when this woman called and told the dj that he had to turn the tv to WTVY OR WDHN that the twin towers had exploded. When I really woke up that morning i thought the world was at its end.

 

[Stanislav]

The assassination of John Lennon: throughout that night, my grandmother and I were helping my father deal with a serious health matter, thus we had neither the radio or television on. It wasn't until around 11:00 P.M. Central that I finally turned the TV on, and heard Ray Wheeler of WLUK/11 Green Bay (then an ABC affiliate) announce the headline story on the late newscast...

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.

 

[RicoGregg]

1960: When Clark Gable died, and when Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz announced their pending divorce, both events the same year, I was listening to KFWB, in those days Channel 98, Color Radio. I believe the newsman was either Cleve Herman or Paul Oscar Anderson.

1962: The death of Marilyn Monroe, also listening to KFWB.

1963: I heard about the JFK shooting while walking out of 8th grade gym class from another student. When I got to my next class, they had a radio on, and everyone was transfixed. We were all let out of school early less than an hour later.

I saw the Oswald shooting by Jack Ruby live on NBC. Tom Petit was the on-the-scene reporter.

1965: The shooting death of Sam Cooke, again I was listening to KFWB. KFWB had a bulletin sounder that went something like this: (Loud announcer): BULLETIN! BULLETIN! BULLETIN! (Electronic tones in background beeping) Here's another bulletin from the KFWB newsroom!

1966: The retirement of Sandy Koufax, which was program-halting news in L.A. I was watching NBC's channel 4 when they interrupted programming. I forget what they were showing. The announcement sent shockwaves throughout both Southern California and the sports world. No one saw it coming. He was only 30.

1968: The death of Martin Luther King, I got that news from a phone call from a friend, then turned the TV on.

The shooting of Robert F. Kennedy, I got the news of the shooting while I was riding in the passenger seat of a car driven by a friend of mine. We were on the Coronado Ferry in the middle of San Diego Bay, and we had just come from an RFK party with local Democrats downtown. Some friends of ours were at the Ambassador Hotel.

Sorry to inject more of myself into this, but the night before he was shot, I was lucky enough to have shaken hands with RFK at that same place in San Diego.

1977: Elvis Presley, I was first aware of it when I tuned into San Diego's channel 10.

1980: John Lennon, I had just finished watching an entire episode of MASH on CBS, who made no mention of it. When it was over, someone visiting told me that John had been shot & killed, and I immediatly went all over the radio dial. I also had an all-night radio gig in San Bernardino at the time, and we ran a lot of ABC Network updates.

1981: Reagan, I just don't remember where I was.

1986: Challenger, I was driving to a job, stopped off at a donut shop, left the engine running and the radio on, tuned to KNX Newsradio, and when I came out, CBS' Christopher Glenn was showing some rare emotion announcing the explosion.

1994: The Northridge Quake, I was shaken out of bed by the event itself. 4:31 in the morning. It was a scary one.

2001: 9/11, I was sleeping when a friend called and told me what happened. I put the TV on, and was transfixed all day, needless to say.

 

[Stanislav]

I saw the Oswald shooting by Jack Ruby live on NBC. Tom Petit was the on-the-scene reporter.

We were watching CBS pretty exclusively that weekend, and so missed the live shooting. CBS was doing some commentary (by Harry Reasoner, if memory serves) and I read later that behind the scenes Dallas was desperately pleading to New York to switch to them as LHO was about to come out. By waiting until the commentary was over, they missed carrying it live by probably less than a minute. When CBS finally cut to Dallas, they were in the middle of the post-shooting scuffle with Ruby, and all you could see was a tangle of bodies that looked like a rugby scrum.

Of course, they quickly ran tape of the shooting and, interestingly, that day is usually regarded as the first time slo-mo was use on the air. Apparently, they learned on the fly that by manually moving the tape reels, they could achieve a primitive form of slo-motion without the image degrading too badly.

As an aside, even though I was only 5 at the time, I was rather a precocious child (although my mother might be more apt to use the term "smart-ass") and surprisingly aware of what was happening. My mother tried to shield me from the TV, but I rebelled and watched tons of coverage that weekend, sitting in front of the TV in rapt attention. She also tells me (I don't have any actual memory of this) that after watching the funeral coverage, I spent a couple of hours walking around the house with my little drum, imitating the cadence of the drummers in the cortege, which really creeped everyone out.

 

[The King Bee]

With JFK's assassination: I was a nine-year old fourth grader at an elementary school in Louisville. I was watching an ETV math class feed when an "all-call" went over the intercom and all the adult staff went to the in-house phones. I remember my class' gorgeous teacher's assistant dissolving into wailing tears which really scared us kids, and class dismissing shortly thereafter.

That Sunday, we had just turned the TV set on in the living room after returning from church, and I remember my dad roaring "God****-they just shot Oswald-I just saw it!" He was watching WBAP-TV's feed to NBC.

With MLK's assassination: I was almost 14 years old and was finishing homework with my mom checking my papers at our kitchen table. The portable TV was on at about 7:30 PM EST on April 4, 1968. Suddenly, Walter Cronkite, who had just left the air on CBS-TV from the daily Evening News show at 6:58, was back on the air with the first bulletins from Memphis. My dad, who was working overtime, called home and instructed the family to stay home and be close to TV and radio. The home phone then lit up with distraught family and friends, and stayed busy all evening.

(Our local Soul radio station, WLOU-AM, which was a daytimer and had signed off at 7:15, returned to the air under the clause of FCC Rules that allows stations to operate past sign-off if a real or potential public emergency existed. They did so with news, commentary and some music until 2:00 AM.)

With Elvis' death: I was in the Air Force, stationed at Cannon AFB, New Mexico in August of 1977. I had just made Staff Sergeant (E-5) and was assigned to the F-111D fighter squadron at Cannon. I was towing two of my planes off the washrack pad (yep, we washed 'em like you do your car in your driveway) and went into the small office to sign off on the work when, over a radio tuned to KWKA-AM in Clovis, the famous CBS Radio sounder came on with the NetAlert jingle. When the NCO in charge and I heard the bulletin about Presley, we looked at each other and said "WHAT?!?!?"

With the Reagan Shooting: I was on master control at WLKY-TV in Louisville, then an ABC-TV affiliate with a strong local news operation. I vividly remember the first set of bulletins within the soap "One Life To Live," the turmoil and on-air tension at ABC News as coverage was pulled together (remember Frank Reynolds' scolding of a member of his staff on-air?) and constant communication with our news department as we literally ripped up and re-arranged that day's program log and newscasts.

With the Challenger disaster: I was operations manager of WDGS-AM, one of the first Urban Adult Contemporary stations in the nation, located in the northern suburbs of Louisville. I was in my office when the AP Teletype (still in many stations then)fired a 10-bell flash and the National Black (radio) Network cue line simultaneously alerted us to the explosion. WDGS went to NBN with coverage for the next three hours.

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

I learned of most of the events of this kind through some other source than television. The one I do remember was seeing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on NBC-TV. When it took place, it took a few moments to register that this was REAL and not what you had seen in television shows or in the movies. It has been re-run so many times since then....The live camera switching lenses just before the shot, the sound of a car horn somewhere closeby...the sound of gunfire....and Tom Pettit saying, "He's been shot...he's been shot...Oswald has been shot".

The only event such as we are discussing that I learned of first-hand via television was when Elvis died. I had a movie on from a local station and switched to pick up a local newscast at 5:30 P.M. on WKRC-TV, Channel 12. Nick Clooney opened with the news of the death.

In June, 1968, I woke up and heard the TV from another room with details of Robert Kennedy being shot. In hearing those words coming out of an overnight sleep, it harkened back to November 22, 1963. You then quickly learned this was now and another Kennedy had been assasinated although Robert did survive for approximately 24 hours before passing. As my mother usually watched the Today Show, the TV was probably on NBC that morning.

 

[Ultimajock]

The assassination of John Lennon: throughout that night, my grandmother and I were helping my father deal with a serious health matter, thus we had neither the radio or television on. It wasn't until around 11:00 P.M. Central that I finally turned the TV on, and heard Ray Wheeler of WLUK/11 Green Bay (then an ABC affiliate) announce the headline story on the late newscast...

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.

...try out http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/15505 -- it's the download page for my Echoes of a Century radio program on the airchecks from that night. There are actually several dial scan airchecks -- from New York, Los Angeles and Louisville -- as well as the NBC-TV bulletin interrupting The Tonight Show (and, jarringly, returning to Carson and McMahon right away), BBC Radio 1 and Walter Cronkite's lead story the following night. Interestingly, the first national bulletin on the shooting was from Kathleen Sullivan on CNN, but, of course, so few viewers were watching (or even had) CNN at the time that most viewers never saw it until CNN did its tenth anniversary programming in 1990...

 

[ShawnHill1]

Northridge earthquake, January 1994: Like Rico and most of Southern California, I was sleeping when the quake happened. I didn't get out of bed right away, but when the quake intensifed more, my cousin and I (we were both 13 at the time, my 14th birthday was two months away) helped get everyone else out of the house, and on to the front of the house. Everyone in our entire neighborhood was out in front of their homes, and it was pitch black. Since it occured on the morning of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, and our school was already out still for winter vacation, we obviously already planned to sleep in. Fortunately, our neighborhood (in South Los Angeles) was OK, with no noticable damage. I took me two hours to fall back to sleep, because we had the radio on, with the latest updates.

9/11/2001: My radio-alarm went off around 6:30am my time (9:30am ET), about a half-hour after the South Tower of the NYC World Trade Center went down and just before the Pentagon was attacked. I was getting ready for work, and I really didn't pay much attention to the radio once I got up from bed, but it wasn't until I was heading to work that the information became more clear. Once I got to work, I searched the internet to get the full details, while of course attending to the work at the job. To say the least, it was a very emotional day at work. My boss and I (along with most everyone else) left work early, and I got home and watched virtually every channel, including the NY1 channel from New York (my area is a Time Warner Cable territory).

 

[Stanislav]

http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/15505 -- it's the download page for my Echoes of a Century radio program on the airchecks from that night. There are actually several dial scan airchecks -- from New York, Los Angeles and Louisville -- as well as the NBC-TV bulletin interrupting The Tonight Show (and, jarringly, returning to Carson and McMahon right away)...

I've heard that clip before, and it IS jarring -- they were in the middle of some silly business -- one of those things where Johnny reads a list that was published somewhere and then ("Everything you'd EVER want to know about [fill in blank] is right there...." "You are wrong, [fill in blank]-breath!!") he comes up with comical additions to it. I know networks want to get on the air as soon as possible with something like this, but don't you think someone might have glanced at the network monitor, seen what was on at that moment, and said "ahhh.....let's wait a couple minutes 'til the break, OK?" :

Interestingly, the first national bulletin on the shooting was from Kathleen Sullivan on CNN, but, of course, so few viewers were watching (or even had) CNN at the time that most viewers never saw it until CNN did its tenth anniversary programming in 1990...

CNN would have only been on for a little over 5 months (they signed on June 1, Lennon was shot December 8 ), so yeah, I doubt they had much cable penetration yet, and even where they were available, not many would have been watching. I'm sure Monday Night Football had about 20 times the audience that CNN had at that point, so it is the Cosell bulletin that everybody remembers.

 

[mjlarochelle]

I was born just before the Challenger explosion, so needless to say I don't remember it. My grandparents were on their way to town to see me for the first time and they saw the news in a motel in Barrie, Ontario, but I don't know what channel they saw it on.

As I recall I first heard about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 while I was home from school for lunch, and it was on CNN.

On 9/11/01, I had just arrived at history class at school and heard about it from a classmate who had heard about it just before coming to class. This was around 9:15 AM. At lunchtime, around 11 there was a TV set up in the school library along with tons of seating and a very large crowd including the librarian was gathered around watching coverage on CNN. Very emotional. Nobody could be bothered to do homework, and teachers that afternoon had a tough time running classes as students wanted to watch the coverage. My father heard about it through the Internet at work, and my mom happened to be watching CNN that morning and saw the second tower get hit live. My memory might be foggy on this, but locally I recall CFPL-TV ran the CNN feed all day, and broke in at 6 for a very brief local newscast with local reaction to the attacks. Also, a friend of mine at that time said he was watching Live with Regis & Kelly at 9, which devoted itself to the attacks. I don't remember if Live had moved back from CFPL to CKCO locally (the show moved between NewNet and CTV in the early 2000s), but if it was CKCO then that means CTV hadn't broken in with coverage yet.

We also interrupted world religions class in March 2003 to watch live CNN coverage of the start of the war in Iraq.

 

[DrBear]

Can't resist adding to this one...

JFK (1963) -- My first-grade class was interrupted by the principal on the speaker system saying "this is something you should hear." He switched on the radio which was playing a beer jingle, and we all giggled, followed by a newsman "repeating what we have just learned..." School let out early, I got to my babysitter's and wasn't allowed to watch TV, so I didn't see what happened that day until the A&E rebroadcast of 1988.

RFK (1968) -- Didn't see it; at age 11; my mother awakened me the next morning with the news.

Reagan shooting (1981) -- I really don't remember, but I do remember sitting in my car at college listening to Al Haig and thinking "This must be badl; he's babbling." I do remember the Frank Reynolds incident though.

Pope John Paul II shooting (1981) -- radio only.

Challenger disaster (1986) -- I was working late shift and was awakened by the radio (I left it on at night to drown out street noise) saying the shuttle had blown up. "It can't, it's a brick airplane" I thought, and ran out to turn on the TV.

9/11 attacks (2001) -- Still sleeping late, awakened by my wife, who had called her office on another matter and was told the news.

John Lennon - Watching MNF like so many others.

One more - the Gulf War. I was in my office, watching the initial reports from Baghdad on ABC. (Our company was too cheap to pay for cable).

 

[Stanislav]

Reagan shooting (1981) -- I really don't remember, but I do remember sitting in my car at college listening to Al Haig and thinking "This must be bad; he's babbling."

When he did the "I'm in charge here" thing, I remember thinking, "Oh, great...just what we need right now -- a coup d'etat." :

 

[azumanga]

Also, a friend of mine at that time said he was watching Live with Regis & Kelly at 9, which devoted itself to the attacks. I don't remember if Live had moved back from CFPL to CKCO locally (the show moved between NewNet and CTV in the early 2000s), but if it was CKCO then that means CTV hadn't broken in with coverage yet.

I didn't even know there was a live "Live with Regis & Kelly" that day, as just about all of its affiliates (including home station WABC, no doubt) concentrated on the event.

 

[bpatrick]

Cosell and Lennon were apparently good friends;
in 1975 Cosell tried to get Lennon to appear on
his "Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell," but
Yoko was pregnant and Lennon had gone into seclusion.

I remember that I had just entered a Burger King for
lunch, and the TV in there was tuned to CNN. I saw
the debris from the Challenger falling from the sky and
knew without being told that no one had survived. I
heard about the Columbia tragedy on the radio.

The day of JFK's assassination my third-grade teacher
had been called to the front office; when she came back
she told us, "Our President has just been shot." Since this
was between 1:30 and 2 PM in North Carolina, I didn't learn
of JFK's death until I got home; IIRC, I got home in time to
see Cronkite make the official announcement, remove his
glasses, and wipe a tear from his eye.

9/11, I was checking my e-mail when my dad called and told
me to turn on the television; the World Trade Center had been
hit.

On a lighter--and maybe tasteless--note, does anyone remember
the night Howard Cosell threw up all over Don Meredith's cowboy boots?
Was it the flu or an inner-ear infection (the official stories put out by
ABC, as I recall)...or had Cosell had too much to drink before the game?
Or how about the night MNF showed the lone Houston Oilers fan giving
the camera the finger, prompting Meredith to quip, "He's saying Houston's
number one." Or my personal favorite (excuse the possible racism): Alex Karras
referring to shaven-headed Otis Sistrunk as "Otis Sistrunk from the University
of Mars."

 

[oldschooler1]

JFK -- only 3. Too young to remember.

MLK -- I remember the bulletin on TV, and my mother and sister gasping when the newscaster announced he was dead.

RFK -- Same spring -- I remember watching the funeral train on TV, and my sister (then 17) crying as she tried to explain to me who Bobby was, and why he was so important. I guess it was a Saturday.

One event I don't think I've seen mentioned yet --- Nixon's resignation speech on a Thursday night, his goodbye the next day, and Ford's swearing-in August 8-9, 1974. I clearly remember watching the CBS coverage that Thursday night before the speech -- the crowd in front of the white house cheering when a moving van pulled up (!), and of course his speech. The next day was warm and humid, and I watched his farewell speech and Ford's swearing-in on a black-and-white Panasonic portable upstairs. Later that Friday night, NBC did a special -- John Chancellor anchored, and they showed the lead story for each night of the week building up to the resignation, complete with their news open for each night.

Lennon -- I was in bed already. In college. My housemate came home, and told me. I turned on the radio, not the TV. I heard a discjockey on 94 Rock in Syracuse crying. I have Walter's lead lines from the next night on tape---a "clean feed" from the net I acquired years later-- complete with the show open:

(spinning globe, over wide shot of the news desk)
Anncr: "From New York....This is, the CBS Evening News, with Walter Cronkite."

"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..." I get chills, whenever I watch it.

Reagan shooting -- first I heard, the 2PM UPI radio news top of the hour newscast that day. It was just breaking; they gave it barely a few seconds. ABC's website used to have Frank Reynolds from that day (I remember watching this, too) of him pounding the desk, yelling to his newsroom "Let's get it right, dammit!" because they initially reported that Reagan had NOT been shot. (Remember him slapping his forehead, too, saying "oh, my god!" or something like that?)

1989 deserves it's own topic in this forum. It was a hellatious busy news year -- Bush the first sworn in, Valdez, Tianmen square, Sioux City plane crash, the San Francisco quake, The wall coming down, the Panama invasion...I know I'm missing a few...

And so it goes.