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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Entry from an unkept diary

August 25, 2009 by Terry Teachout

jk1.jpg• YouTube isn’t quite as wonderful as it ought to be, but when it’s good, it’s really good. The other day, for instance, I discovered that it is now possible to view the first hour and a half of CBS’ live coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy–uncut.

The first thing you see is the opening segment of As the World Turns, TV’s longest-running soap opera, complete with the original commercials. Then, without warning, the screen is filled with a CBS NEWS BULLETIN slide and you hear the once-familiar voice of Walter Cronkite breaking the bad news:

Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. More details just arrived. These details about the same as previously: President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy, she called “Oh, no!”; the motorcade sped on. United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal. Repeating, a bulletin from CBS News, President Kennedy has been shot by a would-be assassin in Dallas, Texas. Stay tuned to CBS News for further details.

What you don’t see is Cronkite’s face. In 1963 the CBS newsroom in New York was not yet equipped with a “flash studio” that made it possible to air live pictures of whatever newsman was breaking into regular programming. Not for another twenty minutes did the network get its cameras warmed up and running.

nm_cronkite_kennedy_090612_mn.jpgNo less surprising is the fact that Cronkite was relying exclusively on wire-service copy, which he read more or less straight from the teletype. Dan Rather was on the scene in Dallas, but he wasn’t able to talk directly to Cronkite in New York, much less send him pictures. Throughout the next hour, Cronkite was forced to read and re-read wire-service reports and to hold up still photographs of the presidential motorcade, all of them transmitted by AP and UPI. Eventually we see live pictures from inside the Dallas Trade Mart, to which Kennedy had been en route. More than a half-hour after the first bulletin, Cronkite quotes Rather, who finally managed to get through to New York by telephone with an unconfirmed report that Kennedy was dead–but Rather is neither seen nor heard.

Fans of Mad Men don’t need to be told how much the world has changed since the Sixties, but I can’t think of a more telling example of how TV news has changed than this dusty ninety-minute time capsule.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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