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Lucy Goes to the Candy Factory
I Love Lucy was, in many ways, one of television’s most innovative shows: fronted by an interracial couple, shot on film rather than kinescope. Fans will fight forevermore over Lucy’s finest hour, but this one leans towards the second-season premiere, “Job Switching” in which Lucy and neighbor Ethel Mertz get jobs at a candy factory and fight a losing battle against a very fast conveyor belt of chocolate. Image from lucystore.com. -
The Beatles on Ed Sullivan
Eight years later, a congratulatory telegram from Presley was part of Sullivan’s presentation of another revolutionary rock act, a quartet of “youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves The Beatles.” It was the group’s first live performance on American television, and viewership shattered even the record Presley numbers: 73 million viewers, over 45% of American households with televisions (not just those that were watching television, but that owned one). Image from cbsnews.com. -
The Apollo 11 Moon Landing
John Glenn’s first orbit in 1962 was televised in its entirety, and when the crew of the Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, the networks covered the event for 30 straight hours. On the CBS desk was Walter Cronkite, rubbing his hands with glee and able to say little more than “Oh, boy.” Cameras on board the Apollo 11 captured this highlight of human achievements — and beamed it to a spellbound world’s televisions. Image from crossmaps.com. -
J.R. Gets Shot on Dallas
Desperate, the show’s writers decided to have patriarch J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) shot in the new season finale, by an unknown assailant to be revealed when the show returned for the fall. By the time the show finally came back — its premiere delayed until November by an actors’ strike — the entire country was asking, “Who shot J.R.?” Image from youtube.com. -
The Wedding of Charles and Diana
On July 29, 1981, when Lady Diana Spencer married
Prince Charles at St. Paul’s Cathedral in an opulent spectacle of a ceremony, viewed by nearly three-quarters of a billion people. It was a lavish introduction for “the People’s Princess”; 16 years later, people around the world would again turn to their televisions, this time to mourn her untimely death in an
automobile accident. Image from Wikipedia. -
M*A*S*H: “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen”
“Goodbye, Farwell, and Amen,” the final episode of the long-running Korean War series (11 years — eight more than the war itself) was an epic: It ran 135 minutes, considerably longer than not only an average episode (30 minutes) but most feature films. It was appropriate, though, as “Goodbye” had the depth, nuance, and pathos of a very good movie; it dealt, as the show’s best episodes had, with the genuine psychological horrors of war, but with grace, wit, and emotion. Image from wikipedia.com -
Muhammad Ali Lights the Olympic Torch
His appearance at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta was kept a secret until the moment he appeared to take the Olympic torch from swimming champ Janet Evans and light the cauldron. The Champ shook slightly, an effect of his Parkinson’s disease, but his quiet dignity — and the crowd’s enthusiastic response — were enough to give any viewer goosebumps. Image from rollingstones.com. -
Election Night
For all the months of anticipation, opinonating, and polling, election nights had tended to be pretty mundane affairs, with calls often made early in the night, leaving pundits and anchors to fill time andannounce forgone conclusions. But that wasn’t the case on November 7, 2000, when the bitter campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore came to a close. Image from abcnews.go.com. -
The September 11th Attacks
The morning news shows were winding down on that Tuesday morning in September when reports came in to their control rooms: a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Initial word was that it was a small passenger plane, but it was soon revealed as a commercial airliner, and when another smashed into the second tower, it was clear that a coordinated attack was underway. Image from wikipedia.com. -
Hurricane Katrina
Severe weather coverage has, by now, become a series of visual cues: breaking waves, heavy rains, on-the-scene reporters braving the forces in network windbreakers. But Katrina became more than just a weather story, as New Orleans’ levees broke, thousands of residents pleaded for help from news cameras,
and reporters on the ground relayed stories of heartbreak and fear from the streets, the roofs, and the New Orleans Superdome. Image from history.com.
