Preserving the 1000 Greatest Icons and Significant Events of Television History... A project by Greg Howell exploring the history and development of television and its cultural impact.
Television pioneer Charles Francis Jenkins is credited with several early broadcasts on the east coast, and on April 17th (some sources credit the date as April 9, 1927), arranged the first city to city television transmissions - or as Jenkins called it, radiovision - of a conversation with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. With a mock studio set up in a Washington DC funeral parlor, Hoover - who had been receiving as much press as President Coolidge due to his radio broadcasts about the thriving U.S. economy - spoke with AT&T president Walter Gifford and was transmitted through the phone companies lines:
Hoover: It is a matter of just pride to have a part in this historic occassion. We have long been familiar with the electrical transmission of sound. Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight, for the first time in the world’s history.
Gifford: The elaborateness of the equipment precludes the possibility of television being available in homes or businesses generally, What its practical use may be, I will leave to your imaginations. As well as being displayed on a small screen, the images are shown on an array of lamps three feet high and two feet wide.
Hoover: Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown. All we can say today is that there has been created a marvelous agency for whatever use the future may find with the full realization that every great and fundamental discovery of the past has been followed by use far beyond the vision of its creator.
The telecast was transmitted from Washington DC to New York, and New Jersey, and 200 miles away in an AT&T laboratory, 60 men watched the first talking images transmitted over phone lines between multiple cities. The New York Times was jubilant about the event, writing "It was fun as if a photograph had suddenly come to life and begun to talk, smile, nod its head and look this way and that..."
The broadcast, however, includes the earliest transmission of tasteless, inappropriate television, as comedian A. Dolan, appeared in black face and spoke with a stereotypical dialect. Unfortunately, this proved more prophetic than Hoover's speech about the future and direction of television programming.
Charles Francis Jenkins first began working with the transmission of "electric pictures in 1894." His pioneering work continued his entire career; however, he represents the incongruities of early broadcasts and competing systems. In the end, Jenkins mechanical method of television lost to electronic broadcasts, but he did establish the first television station, W3XK (located in Wheaton, Maryland) and accomplished the sell of several thousand television receivers along the east coast. He, like Philo Farnsworth, was gobbled up the the behemoth RCA in the early 1930s.
Not really an entry, just something eerie and hauntingly final about this clip, the last 2 minutes of the final analog broadcast in the United States. This final broadcast is from New York's WNBC, which began experimental broadcasting in 1928 (as W2XBS) and began commercial broadcasts July 1, 1941 with a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. The station covered news of the bombing at Pearl Harbor and the end of the World War II in 1945. The station changed call letters in 1954 to WRCA, then to WNBC in 1960.
The station signed off analog for the switch to digital broadcasting near midnight on June 12, 2009, but remained on air for a few weeks longer with specially televised informational programs explaining the switch from analog to digital, then signed off again for the very final time two weeks later. The two week extension made it the very last station across the country to broadcast in analog, and 81 years of history came to a close. WNBC, like some other stations across the country, created closing graphics to signify the switch.
The single greatest example of branding in television history, the NBC Peacock first premiered in 1956. It was the creation of graphic designer John J. Graham. It came to represent NBC as the "Peacock Network" with the slogan Proud as a Peacock and was introduced to signify the networks significant work toward the popularity of color television. NBC, owned by RCA, had a great stake in color television, and while CBS and ABC only dabbled with the new color medium, NBC produced the major milestones in colorcasts - no doubt to energize the public and produce sales of RCA color television receivers. The initial broadcasts of the new color logo was in 1956 and was simply a still. The animated logo of the peacock spreading its color feathers premiered in December of 1957. The color logo replaced NBC's chime logo, a 3 chord xylophone illustration with a three tone audio, which premiered in color in 1954.
NBC requested the new logo from Graham with the call to create something that excited viewers about color and encourage television sales, and one that clearly indicated color when even viewed in black and white. The logo's success changed the image of NBC, promoting superior, colorful programming and is still used by the network today. It is one of the greatest examples of corporate branding, ranking up there with the McDonald's "M" arches and Coca Cola.
In 1959, Graham also created the "snake logo," to be used at the end of a program broadcast on NBC, and periodically, the network attempted to phase out the peacock logo, but by 1980, the network fully embraced the classic trademark and its importance. It has continuously been used since.
1956 Pre-Peacock Logo & First Peacock Logo (Non-animated)
1957
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
The NBC Snake Logo
NBC's Unsuccessful, 1977 Attempt to Drop the Peacock Logo
RCA, the parent company to NBC, needed the perfect show to launch their new NTSC (a branch of the FCC) approved color system. Certainly, hits like Dragnet, Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater, or Your Show of Shows could provide colorful excitement to the medium, RCA realized Kukla, Fran, and Ollie provided every element needed. It was a simple show, with very few objects and a small set that required very little camera movement. Also, being an afternoon telecast, this color experiment would survive the tough scrutiny that would come with bigger fare. And most importantly, the huge ratings promised the viewers and promotion needed to kick off their fresh campaign to excite viewers and advertisers about color programming.
Thus, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was chosen for this monumental television moment. It was one of the biggest hits in all of television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Though a daytime show, its ratings were comparable to top primetime blockbusters like Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle and Toast of the Town with Ed Sullivan. At its peak, the show received 18,000 letters a week. The show was, indeed, unique for a children's show. Both children and adults were fans of the show; and, among its many fans were Tallulah Bankhead, Orson Welles, Marlon Brando, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Gish and Adlai Stevenson. The large net of fans was due to the show's approach. The characters were given depth and continuity. In fact, much of the humor arose from knowing the history or the characters and episodes. It took a few shows for viewer to get hooked, but then...hooked they were.
RCA and NBC began heavy on-air promotion about the experimental colorcast to peak viewer and advertister interest. Interestingly, almost no one had color sets as the FCC was still a few months from officially declaring the NTSC (National Television System Committee) adopted system of color telecasting. The few that could view the experimental color system had close ties to RCA and NBC, such as advertisers and studio executives. While adults may have understood the concept, many kids did not - and understandably so!
The much publicized episode was a special event for the program. Filmed in a New York theater, and with the musical accompaniment of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie cast and crew recreated a grander episode from June, St. George and the Dragon, based on the classic myth and its many incarnations. As children, excited from the long promotion and build-up to the telecast, gathered around the televisions, their wound-up anticipation deflated to disappointment. As documented in Larry Brody's book, Turning Points in Television:
NBC announced that August 30, 1953 was going to be its big day, bringing color to Kuklapolitan fans. Man, was I ready. My mother and sister and I sat down to watch the show, and lo and behold - we saw what we'd always seen: Kukla trying to solve the latest problem....oh yes, they also talked about the fact that they were in color and how exciting it was......for us, everything was black and white and various shades of gray. As it had always been. As it would always be until my family shelled out for a new RCA color TV set...To say I was disappointed is to understate the case. I was devastated. I was so upstet that I refused to watch Kukla, Fran, and Ollie again. At least until the next week.
Undoubtedly, confused kids across the nation were just as dismayed, but for NBC, the experiment worked. The increased interest in color jump started the process (again), and by January, 1954, all the loose ends were thread together and the industry (networks, manufacturers, and the FCC) began the slow, "spectacular" process of color. The first official color broadcast, after the FCC adopted the new system a few months later occurred on December 17, 1953 when NBC broadcast the first colorcast of the NBC "Chimes" logo (at 5:31:17 P.M.)
Notes: A rarity in live television, over 700 kinescope individual episodes are preserved in Chicago. Also of interest, the first color broadcast by a network was also Kukla, Fran, and Ollie - from a fall, 1949 episode that was used as an in-house test by RCA.
Ask people what they were doing the morning of November 22, 1963, and despite their varying responses, many would recall preparation for Thanksgiving the following week and convey a sense of excitement for the nearing holidays. The season was in the air.
Only days before, on November 18, Kennedy presided over the nation's first presidential turkey photo-op at the White House; thus, the first "pardon" for a turkey; thereby, he stated, "I do not plan to eat the bird." The press dubbed it "pardon" in papers the following morning.
This cool fall morning, mothers were plotting the grocery shopping, one of their last free days before children were out for the holidays. Arriving at work, certainly some men were whispering about the previous night's episode of Dr. Kildare, a cliff-hanging episode about a botched teenage abortion; or, for the gentleman, perhaps a mention of Hazel's charity benefit for poor children was better discussion.
At homes and in local restaurants, TV sets were tuned, many to CBS's As the World Turns as lunch time arrived, overhearing, probably drowning out, the characters' droning babble about upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. Whether near a television or busy shopping, working, or studying, events were unfolding that would forever change the world and the business of television news.
Just minutes into the live broadcast, Walter Cronkite interrupted the soap. As the World Turns' cast and crew, however, in New York, continued. They had no idea that Cronkite was about to make this announcement:
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.
News of the bulletin spread quickly. On some broadcasts, as stations continued to interrupt programming, viewers could actually hear other reporters and news staff reverberating the same questions reverberating around them, "the President was shot? He was shot?" The entire nation, from reporters, network executives, to politicians, housewives, businessmen, college and school kids, were all hearing reports at the same time, all seeking answers in dazed disbelief. For the first time, the news televised the process of receiving live incoming information of paramount breaking news. TV stations, local and network, showed reporters on phones conveying the latest bits of incoming news live, to anchors and the audiences simultaneously. TV anchormen had little time for composure, and the emotional nation was truly one body, one entity, one organism, collectively hearing, seeing, and weeping from one disturbing revelation after another.
By the time Walter Cronkite verified the rumors of Kennedy's death officially, the audience had heard the speculation of the President's passing for an half-hour as journalists surmised, "the reports we have is that the President is dead, but this is unconfirmed" and "we have been told that the president has received his last rites." At 2:30 pm eastern, as a stoic but visibly shaken Cronkite reported, "from Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 pm central standard time, 2 o'clock eastern standard time, some 38 minutes ago," People had gathered around television sets across the nation, ultimately totalling 180 million. The instantaneous collective-conscious of the United States was born.
Together, the nation sat transfixed to the tube as the tragedy unfolded. The initial reports were of a man and a woman assassin team seen firing at the President from the underpass; then, a witness claimed a black man fired 3 shots from a top floor building. From the outset, it was reported and confirmed that a secret serviceman guarding Kennedy was killed, and it was reported that Vice President Johnson had been wounded in the arm. Soon their reports of a single 25 year-old gunman was changed to a 30 year-old man, his physical description, and his name, Lee Harvey Oswald. The audience feared for the lives of government officials, including Governor Connelly, whom had been seriously injured. Bit by bit, more questions arose than were answered. The nation feared the worse. Were there others? Was another nation involved? Was the United States soon at war with Russia, or Cuba? Did the assailant act alone?
ABC was first with news footage of Kennedy in Texas earlier that morning. The viewers saw an enthusiastic Kennedy, waving to crowds numbering in the thousands. As other networks began broadcasting live telecasts from Texas and Washington, crews and reporters scrambled to shed light on the rapid fire succession of the day's events. As TV Guide documented, The TV screens:
...showed the smiling President, alive and vibrant, moving through a sea of outstretched hands which wanted only to touch him. ABC was to follow this later with an interview with James C. Hagerty, in which the onetime Eisenhower Presidential press secretary, now a broadcasting executive, illuminated the nature of the security problem.
"This is the President's way of saying thank you to the people," Hagerty declared, referring to the scenes at the airport. "How can you stop it? I don't think you want to stop it . . . It's rather difficult, while guarding the President, to argue that you can't shake hands with the American people or ride in an open car where the people can see you. . .
American's witnessed via television each gruesome and macabre moment, from the motorcade ride to Parkland Hospital to the President's casket being removed from the hospital, Mrs. Kennedy by his side. At first, the earliest reports seemed more like radio coverage than television news; but, as the tragedy unfolded, television journalism found its voice - and image - and the two elements began working in conjunction with each other. No longer two components struggling to function, but now each working harmoniously together. As the afternoon darkened into night, all regular television programming had subsided. For the next three days, every station held diligent vigil with the shattered country, as TV journalism improvised a new, pioneering method for broadcasting the news.
This journal, a sketchbook exploring the significant events and icons of television history, is a draft and research tool for a project by Greg Howell. The goal is to offer a new and unique spin on the documentation of the history of television and its impact on modern culture.
Many entries are simply "water cooler" television, a collection of individual telecasts that had the U.S. population and media talking, often prior to the broadcast and definitely the following days, weeks, and even months. Other entries are larger moments that changed and influenced monumental historical events - and impacted the culture at large as well as influenced the direction of television.
This project intends to explore individual television broadcasts, those events that are tied to a very specific date and time. It is not a broad review of television shows or networks. The only exception is the documentation and discussion of television icons, those people, entities, or symbols that had a long-lasting impact on popular culture, some of which are often forgotten or nameless by newer generations, but whose influence is still apparent.
Television pioneer Charles Francis Jenkins is credited with several early broadcasts on the east coast, and on April 17th (some sources credit the date as April 9, 1927), arranged the first city to city television transmissions - or as Jenkins called it, radiovision - of a conversation with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. With a mock studio set up in a Washington DC funeral parlor, Hoover - who had been receiving as much press as President Coolidge due to his radio broadcasts about the thriving U.S. economy - spoke with AT&T president Walter Gifford and was transmitted through the phone companies lines:
