I remember flipping around the dial a bit.  Didn't exclusively watch Walter.  Also I remember CTV with Harvey Kirk had decent coverage.  Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto had about 10,000 people show up and watch the moon landing on a huge screen at city hall.  They were showing CTV's broadcast.

As for what Canadian stations did, is anyone's guess??  RA please, how can you be so clueless.  Your disinterest and lack of knowledge on Canadian TV is embarrassing.  Guess that's why you yammer on about US TV and radio so much no matter how unimportant or trivial.   CTV and CBC both had wall to wall coverage.

This pic has been posted various times on SOWNY...funny how some people choose to block it out.


 

 

Last edited by paterson1 (July 20, 2023 11:14 am)

paterson1 wrote:

As for what Canadian stations did, is anyone's guess??  RA please, how can you be so clueless.  Your disinterest and lack of knowledge on Canadian TV is embarrassing.  Guess that's why you yammer on about US TV and radio so much no matter how unimportant or trivial.   CTV and CBC both had wall to wall coverage.

Wow. You can turn almost anything I say into a supposed bashing of Canadian TV. I can assure you as the author, there was absolutely no intention to denigrate those north of the border in my message. 

This was a totally innocent memory of having watched Walter Cronkite and only Walter Cronkite at the time. It was not to imply (nor does it say anywhere) that Canadians didn't cover it or didn't do a good job on the story, just that Cronkite was such a part of the coverage in my mind that he was almost like a fourth astronaut. I'm sure I'm not the only one who watched him. But I never saw any other coverage, and that includes Canada's. That's not a blight on us, just a fact that you've totally twisted for some reason. (You can see a CTV ad for the coverage below.)

Cronkite is most associated with not only the moon landing, but also the Kennedy assassination. And yes, Canadian TV covered the latter story as well. And they were probably really good at it, too. But again, my sole memory of that event was Cronkite's infamous announcement confirming Kennedy's death, taking off his glasses and briefly choking up. It remains one of the most iconic moments in TV history. 

That's all this post was about. Nothing on whether Canada's coverage was inferior or better. Nothing about the anchors' talents, which I'm assuming were considerable on both sides of the border. Not everything I write is about the good and bad of Canadian TV. This was simply a nostalgic comment about a very big day in human history. 

How you read it as something else may, in fact, say more about you than me. As Sigmund Freud noted a very long time ago, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."  

And for the record, I've never seen that picture of City Hall before, so thanks for posting it. I always enjoy learning more about history, TV or otherwise. 

Hi RA,
I seem to remember it was Walt on the CBC feed.   To watch this event we schleped an old black and white TV from my grandparents up to the cottage at Catchacomma Narrows.  I rigged up a large old antenna on a piece of conduit pipe attached to the cottage and used some old brown two wire cable run to the TV.   We either received CHEX ch12 or CKVR ch 3 (or some repeater).  I had my sisters turn on the TV and I manually rotated the antenna until they screamed what channel looked the best.
As the picture was coming live from the moon, I went down to the dock to see a moonlit night and looked up to the skies at he moon itself to see what was thought to be a techno miracle.   Hard to fathom at the time!

My recently-retired barber told me that he dragged a TV out to his backyard, hooked up the rabbit ears, and watched the moon as he watched the broadcast of the moon landing.

 

I've published this here before, but here's the article Walter Cronkite wrote for TV Guide on the occasion of the first moon landing. 

At the time we were in an area that had only one TV channel. CKNX in Wingham was a CBC affiliate and they showed the Cronkite version.

This video brings back memories...



 

It's been somewhat lost to history, but there was something else dramatic that happened on that day. An idiot teen who took down his pants to taunt passers-by in traffic tripped and landed on another guy. And the headline read, "Moon Lands On Man."

And yes, I was already sorry before I even wrote that. 

RIYL: 'The Dish', about the Australians tending the satellite dish responsible for the transmissions of the landing.

I don't think your apology is necessary but thanks. I think we both misread each other. All I was really saying was that I watched CBS for this event and I never tuned in anywhere else. So of course I had no idea what Canadian stations were doing. I was actually surprised to hear from many here that CBC took the Cronkite coverage. 

As far as running this in past years, instituted by yours truly, that does not surprise me. I have trouble remembering what I posted last week, let alone three years ago. I've checked some of those since you mentioned it and in this case, the question was about where you watched, not just the fact that it happened. And remember, we constantly have newcomers here who never saw any of those posts. But it's a fair criticism and I'll try to check before I do a perennial. 

As for my denigration of some (not all) Canadian shows, that's just my opinion, mostly of the early days of Canuck TV and I have a right to that opinion, right or wrong. For far too long, our television had a cheap look to it that even another Canadian troupe, SCTV. used to satirize. The quality is much better now that technology has changed and it's not as expensive to get that polished appearance that American shows always seemed to have and for too long, we didn't. 

I do watch some home grown programs - Transplant for one. I'm happy for the cast that it's back on NBC, although I don't think there's any question it's only because of the strikes. And I've grown fond of Son of a Critch, even though I wasn't knocked out by it when it first started. But anything with Malcolm McDowell and radio can't be all bad. I wonder if the U.S. audience will relate to it on the CW. That should be interesting to see and whether Americans tune in and will get the Newfoundland references.  

paterson1 wrote:

      in fairness, you seem to have a habit of trivializing and a rather condescending attitude  

That is "fairness"?

Hansa wrote:

I believe Charles Templeton helmed CTV's coverage. I suspect most people in Toronto would have watched Cronkite unless reception was an issue.

Actually, it was Harvey Kirck who did the majority of CTV's coverage of the Apollo 11 moon mission. As the Harvster mentioned in his autobiography "Nobody Calls Me Mr. Kirck",CTV aired video from NBC's coverage of the event, which was sponsored by Gulf Oil. Harv said that they had a production assistant in the control room who would holler "Gulf" at the top of her lungs each time the logo would appear on NBC's coverage and the delay would allow CTV to cut away before it appeared on Canadian TV screens.