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Lucy Goes To The Candy Factory
Fans will fight forevermore over Lucy’s finest hour, but this one leans towards the second-season premiere, “Job Switching” (airing September 14, 1952), 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 courtesy of irisds.com -
Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan
Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 9, and 60 million viewers tuned in — the largest audience to that point in television history. By his third appearance the following January, objections over Presley’s “lewd” performing style led to the controversial edict that he only appear from the waist up. Image courtesy of NY Daily News -
The End of The Fugitive
For four years and 120 episodes, audiences were riveted by The Fugitive, one of television’s first serialized dramas. Each episode had its own self-contained story, but all were part of the overarching narrative of wrongfully convicted Dr. Richard Kimble’s hunt for the “one-armed man” who had murdered his wife. Image courtesy of avclub.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. -
“Do You Believe in Miracles?”
Few types of programming captured the magic and energy of live television like sports, which found fans across the world glued to their sets, yelling at their screens, and shaking their friends in excitement. And one of the greatest TV sports moments ever came on February 22, 1980, when the ragtag underdog US Olympic hockey team faced the heavily favored Soviet team at Lake Placid, New York. -
J.R. Gets Shot on Dallas
The primetime CBS soap Dallas was chugging along, taking up a nice perch in the Nielsen Top 10 — doing so well, in fact, that the suits at CBS asked the show’s producers to come up with two more episodes beyond the “Jock’s Trial” two-parter that was to close its third season. 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. -
The Wedding of Charles and Diana
The modern phenomenon of these affairs as Must-See TV began 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. Image courtesy of The Telegraph -
The Rescue of Baby Jessica
Every once in a while, a single story captivates the entire television audience, and becomes a shared experience. Such was the story of Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old playing in the back yard of her aunt’s home in Midland, Texas, who took a tumble down a 22-foot well on October 14 and became the center of the most riveting program on television. -
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” commanded Ronald Reagan in June of 1987, and two years later, the job was done. Gorbachev’s radical notions of perestroika and glasnost changed thinking in the EasternBloc, and in 1989, after months of protests, the East German government unexpectedly opened up the lines of free travel between East and West Germany. Image courtesy of history.info -
The O.J. Simpson Chase
The case would captivate the nation for the next year, well after Simpson was found not guilty of the crimes in October 1995. Image courtesy of people.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 and announce 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 courtesy of politico.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 courtesy of The Telegraph
