The special notes one other problem - the bulky and decidely not really portable cameras they had back then had vacuum tubes in them and they took a while to warm up and sync everything with the control room. The reason CBS went with a "Bulletin" card only on screen was apparently because, even after they got the camera in place, it simply wasn't ready to go when the newspeople were. Yet they were trying desperately to beat NBC and ABC to the news, so Cronkite went into the radio booth to deliver his now infamous first report about 'shots being fired at the motorcade in Dallas.' But no one actually saw him do it.

Given our technology now, it's hard to fathom how truly clunky things were back then. 

It's amazing the effect this one tragedy had on all kinds of things you wouldn't normally think about, including another incident involving CBS. In "The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book" by Vince Waldron (a must read for fans of that classic show) there's a revelatory tale about the day Kennedy was shot and the outcome it had on the episode being filmed that week.

For those familiar with the show, generally acclaimed as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, it's the one about Rob and Laura Petrie holding a birthday party for their son, Ritchie, in their house and how it spirals out of control with all the invited kids trashing the place. It was 78th episode, called "Happy Birthday and Too Many More." The Kennedy nightmare began just as they were starting dress rehearsals, and Waldron draws the eerie scene of the cast sitting around with party hats and noisemakers, while they're watching coverage of the shooting on set over a TV screen. They had to get the thing filmed that week, but as you can imagine, no one felt like doing anything, let alone trying to be funny. Still, the show must go on as the old cliche goes, and they somehow muddled through it.

"We just sat around all week in a stupor," Van Dyke is quoted as saying.  It was the only episode of the show that used canned laughter, something creator Carl Reiner absolutely abhorred, but he knew there was no point in trying to get laughs out of a stunned and grief-stricken live studio audience. To this day, the surviving cast and crew call it the worst episode of the Dick Van Dyke show ever made and most refuse to even talk about it.

And all because JFK had been shot a very long way away in Dallas, leading to a fallout in Hollywood that most of us would never even know about until many years later.

Last edited by RadioActive (August 4, 2015 1:19 pm)

And you can see the news bulletin here:
It happens at the 10:00 minute mark.



 

Last edited by Peter the K (August 4, 2015 9:31 pm)

@dieter They actually dramatized that moment in the doc, although they just showed the other reporter grabbing for the phone. I don't recall any physical violence being depicted. Still, that shows the competitive spirit of news wire reporters back in the day. 

@Dale Patterson Thanks for that link. I'd never heard that story before and as you know, I love that kind of inside TV history stuff.

@Peter the K That footage is fascinating for a number of reasons. But my favourite is that, after breathlessly announcing that someone had just shot at the President of the United States, they went back to regular programming - not once, but twice! That's simply unimaginable today, when every network would stay on air waiting for a single morsel of information to update the story. Can you imagine, "Someone just bombed the White House, wounding the president. More when we know how bad it is. Now back to America's Got Talent!" I suppose that's how things were done back in the days when live TV wasn't quite as easy to put on, but it just seems unthinkable in the age of 24 hour news.