What were you watching when.....?

[danderson4411]

In no particular order:

-OJ Simpson jury verdict: Heard this live on the radio while driving on the Washington DC Loop.

-Challenger: I was a sophomore in college. Had just walked into class (Accounting, I think) and the professor announced that "In case you hadn't heard, the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after liftoff...there were no survivors". Not long before class, I had walked into and out of the college's "community center" where a tv was tuned into the upcoming liftoff. Lots of people were watching coverage. As I stayed only long enough to probably grab something from the snack bar, I missed the disaster by mere minutes.

9/11: At the time, I had a part time mail carrier job with the US Postal Service in central Massachusetts. But on this day, I was off for a few days enjoying some time on Cape Cod. As I recall, I was getting ready to head to the hotel's restaurant for breakfast. Heard something on the radio about a plane flying into one of the towers. Turned on the tv, watched coverage for a few minutes, then went for breakfast. Went back to the room, watched coverage for a while longer. Really not sure if I saw the 2nd plane hit live or not. Then, since I was basically on vacation, I headed to the beach for the day, listening to Howard Stern's account of what was happening on the way. The beach was mostly deserted and I didn't have a radio on the beach with me and I didn't bother to walk back to my car to check the news. Didn't see any tv coverage of it all until much later in the day. On the plus side, the weather was beautiful, got a nice tan. Back at the USPS job the next day, everything was all about safety and I believe it was mentioned that the only government agency to continue working that day (whether just in NY or everywhere, I don't recall) was the USPS.

I will say this about me I first thought was(note I was watching "On Scene" on CBS Eye On People when the first plane hit) my Mom was watching GMA and when she heard Charles Gibson say that they were about to be joined by the full network I knew right away this was a big story but when the second plane hit I knew right away is it was terrorism it was no joke and when Peter Jennings got into the anchor desk you knew this was a really big story he was on for a long time until after midnight that was one of those moments that you remember what show you were watching when the world changed almost a few weeks later when my folks watched the CMA Awards when Vince Gill introduced Alan Jackson I had no idea what he was going to sing but the end result was very emotional

 

[danderson4411]

during the 1994 earthquake i remember that my NBC station WYFF simulcast KNBC's coverage with Chuck Henry and Colleen Williams but they also showed NBC's coverage with i think Jane Pauley they may have switched back and forth they even preempted the local news to show KNBC's coverage it was the first time i had seen Chuck Henry and Colleen Williams it surprised me at the time they would do that but the earthquake was a really big story Tom Brokaw was off that day so it was i do remember Bryant Gumbel did the first interruption during the Today Show but then it switched to Chuck and Colleen until Jane Pauley could get to the main desk in New York i even for the first time saw Kelly Lange i had never heard of her before the earthquake

 

[LKellerIII]

during the 1994 earthquake i remember that my NBC station WYFF simulcast KNBC's coverage with Chuck Henry and Colleen Williams but they also showed NBC's coverage with i think Jane Pauley they may have switched back and forth they even preempted the local news to show KNBC's coverage it was the first time i had seen Chuck Henry and Colleen Williams it surprised me at the time they would do that but the earthquake was a really big story Tom Brokaw was off that day so it was i do remember Bryant Gumbel did the first interruption during the Today Show but then it switched to Chuck and Colleen until Jane Pauley could get to the main desk in New York i even for the first time saw Kelly Lange i had never heard of her before the earthquake

A similar thing happened during the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) shootout in the mid 70s, which happened in LA, though I don't think the network was involved yet at that point. Our Bay Area NBC affiliate - KRON - patched into KNBC's live coverage. Rather than go back and forth between the live footage and the Bay Area anchor - they just let the KNBC anchors do all the talking...IIRC, it was Tom Snyder.

 

[Ccook55]

November 22, 1963: Second grade, Rose Elementary School, Escondido CA, recess, about 10:40 AM PST. I was chatting with a girl in my class who'd heard that Kennedy had been shot. My mind was saying "really?!" but verbally I wasn't sure what to say. As we went inside, we proceeded with school work, when at 11:35 AM, the principal got on the PA system and said, point blank, "President Kennedy is dead." A collective gasp went up among students and faculty alike. School was dismissed early, and if we weren't interested in coverage of the assassination, we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves that weekend. We were in the San Diego TV market and had only four channels (12 was a Spanish station out of Tijuana).

July 20, 1969: In front of the TV watching Neil Armstrong take a giant leap for mankind.

December 8, 1980: Watching Monday Night Football. My jaw dropped in shock when Cosell reported that Lennon had been shot dead.

January 28, 1986: Mom's 56th birthday, for croonin' out loud. I was working at Mickey D's, and she called me to tell me the Space Shuttle Challenger has exploded. I had an early shift so I made it home at 1:30 to see the continuing coverage. Housewives were angrily lighting up the network switchboards because the coverage of the Challenger bumped their precious soap operas.

September 11, 2001: Getting ready for work when mom called and said the WTC had been run into by a plane commandeered by terrorists. I turned on the TV (didn't matter what network or news outlet) and saw the second plane hit. Mom was on the phone and was near hysteria. As I made it to work, a TV in the break room was on the only channel we could receive OTA (WSB/channel 2) where while working I'd check in to see what was going on.

 

[danderson4411]

November 22, 1963: Second grade, Rose Elementary School, Escondido CA, recess, about 10:40 AM PST. I was chatting with a girl in my class who'd heard that Kennedy had been shot. My mind was saying "really?!" but verbally I wasn't sure what to say. As we went inside, we proceeded with school work, when at 11:35 AM, the principal got on the PA system and said, point blank, "President Kennedy is dead." A collective gasp went up among students and faculty alike. School was dismissed early, and if we weren't interested in coverage of the assassination, we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves that weekend. We were in the San Diego TV market and had only four channels (12 was a Spanish station out of Tijuana).

July 20, 1969: In front of the TV watching Neil Armstrong take a giant leap for mankind.

December 8, 1980: Watching Monday Night Football. My jaw dropped in shock when Cosell reported that Lennon had been shot dead.

January 28, 1986: Mom's 56th birthday, for croonin' out loud. I was working at Mickey D's, and she called me to tell me the Space Shuttle Challenger has exploded. I had an early shift so I made it home at 1:30 to see the continuing coverage. Housewives were angrily lighting up the network switchboards because the coverage of the Challenger bumped their precious soap operas.

September 11, 2001: Getting ready for work when mom called and said the WTC had been run into by a plane commandeered by terrorists. I turned on the TV (didn't matter what network or news outlet) and saw the second plane hit. Mom was on the phone and was near hysteria. As I made it to work, a TV in the break room was on the only channel we could receive OTA (WSB/channel 2) where while working I'd check in to see what was going on.

as far as the Challenger explosion my mom didn't care if it preempted the soaps- she was a news fan too

 

[cwf1701]

Northwest Airlines 255 (August 16, 1987): i was flipping thru the channels when i stopped on WDIV at around 8:45 PM. at that time a local bulletin came on and announced that a plane just crashed at Detroit Metro Airport. i think i remember around the 2nd or 3rd bulletin that they announced that it was a large aircraft that crashed just off the airport property because after that i was flipping between 2 (CBS), 4 (NBC), 7 (ABC), 50 (Fox), and CNN for any bulletins.

 

[ShawnHill1]

January 28, 1986: Mom's 56th birthday, for croonin' out loud. I was working at Mickey D's, and she called me to tell me the Space Shuttle Challenger has exploded. I had an early shift so I made it home at 1:30 to see the continuing coverage. Housewives were angrily lighting up the network switchboards because the coverage of the Challenger bumped their precious soap operas.

I hate to bump an old thread, but I watching a documentary yesterday about Carroll Spinney, the famed puppeteer best known for Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on "Sesame Street", yesterday on Amazon Prime. In the story, at the height of Big Bird's popularity (before the franchise was hi-jacked by the Elmo character), they were doing a series and movies involving him, and one such project unfortunately didn't take place because of the Challenger tragedy. Days before they were to record this Big Bird-NASA special, Spinney and the camera crew took a tour of the ship, just to get a feel around; however, the NASA people and the camera crew realized that Spinney in costume couldn't fit inside the entry way, let alone the rest of the ship. Because of that, the special was scrapped...besides the obvious tragic ramifications, imagine what the feeling if Spinney/Big Bird was aboard the Challenger on that tragic day.

By the way, the documentary itself was terrific...highly recommend it if you're a Muppets/Sesame Street fan, or just someone who appreciates valuable contributors to the history of television.

 

[hamster]

July 18, 1984 the day a gunman went into a San Diego area McDonalds and shot to death many people and injured many more.

We were in Virginia Beach that day staying in a hotel room on the oceanfront. Watching the news on WAVY 10's "The Daily News" and their coverage of the massacre I looked outside the window and saw a McDonalds that was next to the hotel and I noticed that local radio station Z104 who was about to do a live broadcast from there only to take down the equipment and drove away and by sunset that McDonalds was closed for the night.

 

[seatownmedia]

September 11th, 2001. I was living in Boise, Idaho. My assistant program director woke me up at about 6:55 AM, (I would have woken at 7), and said an airliner had crashed into one of the WTC buildings. I immediately went to my tv, and put a video tape in and started recording. Only caught the aftermath, which turned out to be even more important.

 

[ixnay]

When the Northridge quake hit, my stepfather and I were finishing breakfast in the restaurant at a Holiday Inn (it's since changed to a rival's brand) in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains (I'd done some skiing the day before). When we got back to our room (it was checkout day), my mom informed us that a quake had hit L.A. She had on the "Today" show which she was an avid viewer of at the time. I was interested in following the story, but a snow and ice storm had begun in the mid Atlantic and we were rushing to pack and check out and get ourselves back to Maryland (we made it home that afternoon).

ixnay

 

[Mike_Rafone]

As a UGA Student on the shooting of MLK

I was at the UGA, in a Sigma Delta Chi meeting that just before 7:00 PM on Thursday, April 4, 1968. had just started.

Suddenly a girl, Susan Griffin maybe, came in the door in a panic.
"Something has happened in the news, on the news, on the teletype!" she stammered. Since UNIVERSITY SHOWCASE [a programming service we journalism students provided to WGAU-FM M-F from 4:00 until 7:30 PM] was on the air, in its last 30 minutes, and since most of us there for the meeting had connections with SHOWCASE, the meeting dissolved and we all raced downstairs.

We crashed into the narrow hallway and there was Ronnie Byers holding teletype copy with the bulletin that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot in Memphis. I think Doyle Mote was on the board. I think John Parks took the copy and went into the news booth, and George Pirkle went into the studio.

John read the bulletin, and George got into some quiet instrumental music while several of us crowded into the news booth. Ronnie Byers, who was nominal "News Director" for SHOWCASE then, was getting the recording phone hooked up and going to make some calls.

I don't know how he knew the number, or exactly who it was he called but it was some civil rights leader in Atlanta.

"This is Ronnie Byers, of UNIVERSITY SHOWCASE news in Athens Georgia, and I was wondering if you have any comments on Dr.King's being shot in Memphis tonight."

Well, that thick Ball Ground accent didn't help matters at all. I believe whoever it was shouted something about "what kind of sick joke is this?" and slammed down the phone.

Somebody thought to call WGAU and tell them. Whoever was there said they would keep us on until they needed to take it back. I believe John repeated the bulletin, George ran music, and several of us took turns reading new takes that came in off the AP machine.

Then sometime before 7:30, CBS came on with coverage and they dropped us. But I think there had already been a CBS NetAlert bulletin on GAU-AM before they recaptured the FM from us.

 

[radiofan11]

I have a rather unique perspective on the Aurora Shooting:

While I didn't see the news coverage live as it happened, I was living in Guatemala at the time with my host family studying Spanish. We had four TV channels that broadcast in English: Some sort of BBC channel, BYUtv, CNN International, and KNBC out of LA (As an aside, Guatemala is on Mountain Standard Time year round, so there are points of the year where LA is 2 hours behind, meaning the 11 PM news is at 1 AM(!)) At any rate, the shooting was all over CNN, all over the Guatemalan newspapers, but for some reason KNBC was blocked by the cable company for most of the weekend. I was finally able to get the American perspective Sunday night with Nightly News (Which was preempted for a speech by President Obama on the shootings) and KNBC's 6 PM news.

 

[JeeperOne]

i remember faintly during the LA riots that my NBC station WYFF actuality simulcast KNBC with anchors Jess Marlowe and Colleen Williams until Tom Brokaw could get into position to interrupt the network but i am not 100 percent sure it was during the soap opera "Another World" my guess is that NBC gave the go-ahead for WYFF to pick up KNBC because it was a really big story

Funny you should mention this because when Hurricane Andrew hit Miami, KCNC 4 here in Denver picked up coverage from sister station WFOR 4 in Miami

Since that was THE LAST TIME that had ever happened for an event such as this, I would imagine the Feds gave them (And CBS) some MAJOR heat over simulcasting WFOR 4 during an emergency in Miami in the first place

Cheers & 73

 

[JeeperOne]

i remember that even though abc was showing the wonder years my ABC station WLOS cut to Cheryl Jennings(the anchor for KGO) until Ted Koppel could get into the Washington anchor desk

Which event are you even talking about ?? You quoted MY ENTIRE POST

Cheers & 73

 

[paulsonj72]

I was born in 1972 so my 1st memory of a major news event was the assassination attempt of President Reagan. My 3rd grade teacher came into the classroom at the end of the day and was nearly in tears telling us that Reagan had been shot. I'm sure she was afraid we had another assassination of a president. When the Challenger exploded I was in the 8th grade and heard it over the lunch hour(we had an early lunch) and in my 2nd class after lunch we watched coverage of the event. The Bay area earthquake I.like many millions of people, was watching the World Series. The Gulf War in 1991 I heard from a friend down the hall in my dorm that the war had started. When Oklahoma City happened I w as in college and had an 8 AM class and when it ended I went home and didn't turn the TV on for a while and when I did thats how I heard of it. The rest of the day I was at the campus radio station(no network affiliation) and was watching a small TV and keeping abreast via the AP wire. OJ Simpson's verdict I was working at and we had a radio so I heard it there. When Princess Diana died I was working at my radio job and we were running a Minnesota Gopher Football game but the ABC news wire in the next room was going continuously all night with updates. And for 9/11 I was working at another radio station and the 1st word I got came from another co worker who came in with the news because I was doing a local news broadcast at 8:00 AM(CT) As the news became more grim I was giving updates from the AP wire until about 8:50 AM when we joined ABC News for continuing coverage. I didn't actually see footage until I got home past 5:00. I normally finished my work day between 1 and 2 PM so this was a LONG day.

 

[danderson6500]

I have a few

The Challenger Explosion- was watching some game show on NBC when John Palmer the "Today" newsreader at the time, broke into the show with the special report.

I can't remember what story it was, but in 1988 i was watching Santa Barbara the soap opera when Tom Brokaw came on with a special report. Now that i think of it, it might have been the plane crash in Scotland.

I know, i was watching the backhaul of the AFC championship game, but this one is a bit memorable- when the gulf war got really going.

The SF Earthquake- I was watching the world series when it happened. Scanned the satellite to see interesting footage on that night.

My mom was watching General Hospital when the Columbine shooting took place. I don't know what i was watching, maybe i had it on CNN.

 

[seatownmedia]

Didn't "Niteline" start as a result of the Iranian Hostage crisis?

Yes, this is correct.

 

[seatownmedia]

An old thread, but a good subject. Though I was way too young to remember it, the JFK killing, IMO, remains the saddest day in television history. I think from a standpoint of the country going from innocence to violence, this was the turning point, atleast in the television era. The country had not experienced something like this before on TV, and the result was completely shocking and life-changing for many. It also represented a moment when TV news broadcasting changed. All of a sudden, live cameras were essential. This happened only days after his death, with live cameras covering the shooting of Oswald. TV News changed due to these events, there is no question. While events since have been sad, (I think 9/11 is right up there) I still think this one remains as the worst breaking news in television history.

 

[hamster]

For me it's an easy one...the April 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain. At the time I did 7-midnight for a rock station and we would sometimes play Nirvana. No I was never a huge fan of Kurt's or even Nirvana and NO his suicide was hardly a shocker to us BUT what made this well different was all the kids who had called us saying that they were very upset by this. Some even suggested that they may commit suicide because of Kurt. For two weeks we had to give the number for suicide prevention after every song. I guess it worked as I nor anyone else at the radio station had heard of anyone actually killing themselves over Kurt Cobain.

 

[CTListener]

For me it's an easy one...the April 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain. At the time I did 7-midnight for a rock station and we would sometimes play Nirvana. No I was never a huge fan of Kurt's or even Nirvana and NO his suicide was hardly a shocker to us BUT what made this well different was all the kids who had called us saying that they were very upset by this. Some even suggested that they may commit suicide because of Kurt. For two weeks we had to give the number for suicide prevention after every song. I guess it worked as I nor anyone else at the radio station had heard of anyone actually killing themselves over Kurt Cobain.

Kind of like threatening to move to Canada after an election, then.