Re: SAD BREAKING NEWS IN TELEVISION HISTORY!
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.
