Question about news in the 1960's

Weather is absolutely a current staple of national newscasts. No, that was not the case in the past. Ginning up a weather story with lines like "40 million Americans are threatened by the storm" is standard practice these days. Often as not, a weather story is made out to be absolutely the coming of Armageddon, and turns out to be not that big of a deal. The networks hire good looking meteorologists, put them front and center on the national show, give them lots of airtime, and send them places to cover weather stories which only occasionally are actually the stuff of national concern. This practice is quite deliberate. It gets people to watch.

To rejigger the figures quoted by Elevator above: the national newscasts are indeed 20 minutes of drug commercials, but not 10 minutes of news. More like three minutes of news, seven minutes of animal video and other meaningless "caught on camera" inanity lifted from the Internet, then the 20 minutes of drug commercials, etc.

Distinguishing the three traditional broadcast networks from one another: CBS is making some attempt to present less fluff and more important and traditional coverage and reporting, with increasing success; NBC is somewhere in the middle, and ABC is by far the worst offender when it comes to filling air time with meaningless drivel, mostly regurgitated from the interwebs. Watch all three and you'll see the clear difference between them.

 

Really? I'm glad I wasn't the only one. How old were you?

 

I was 12 in January of 1967, and even more obnoxious then than I am now. I think I was reacting both to the fact that even I could see that they were merely repeating the same half-dozen facts over and over again, with no real news and no real story beyond three men had died in a tragic accident, as well as the change in the broadcast schedule. And they repeated their handfuls of facts for the next 12-18 hours, as I recall. What would've made more sense is do a one-hour special, then update it throughout the day with special reports as new facts become known.

 

Were you a fan of the CBS "Super Saturday" line-up?

 

Oh, I watched all that crap non-stop. I was glued to my set from about 7AM to noon or 1PM, then I'd run around the neighborhood and create mayhem. I think I watched most of the Saturday morning cartoon stuff until I graduated from high school. After awhile, the cartoons got lamer and I got busier.

 

Disasters like tornadoes, floods, and blizzards were covered if they were in the viewing area. And that's about it.

 

I remember hurricanes and earthquakes on the national news, much less of a disaster than that and it was local.

 

During the '66 or '67 TV strike, I remember hearing a song that ran down the titles of several TV shows, and one verse name-checked "The Space Kidettes" and rhymed it with "What on earth are they going to feed them yet"? I was only about 7, so I it was about feeding the Space Kidettes!

 

Sad and disturbing in retrospect, but I remember watching Walter Cronkite hosting the evening news during the Vietnam war era in the mid 60's and there would be 'scores' of how many US vs Vietcong fatalities were tallied.

 

No it wasn't; the Egyptian president actually meeting with the Israeli president, when just a few years earlier they'd been fighting the Yom Kippur War? It was historic, and it was the best thing Jimmy Carter managed to accomplish as president.

 

I remember watching it too, because it happened just after he'd been declared the winner of the bitterly-fought California primary battle between him and Gene McCarthy. He addressed his victory crowd, the political reporters on all the networks started to talk about what it would mean at the Democrats' convention in Chicago, and then Sirhan Sirhan crossed his path. Incredibly shocking stuff!

 

Ah, the good old days when "breaking news" actually was breaking news!

 

It would depend on how old the students were; my cousin (who was then 10 years old) told me about how they cheered when they heard the news of JFK's death in her school because the principal announced over the intercom they were being let out of school for the day and to them any chance to get out of school was a great day.

 

My four-year-old brain always remembered JFK's assassination as the time when there were no cartoons on TV and all mom wanted to do was sit and watch some horrible TV show that made her cry all day. And it was on all the channels, day after day.

 

It wasn't until weather satellites and radar developmment in the '60's and '70's that we had data for national weather forecasts - or even accurate local weather forecasts.

Or, I should say, started gathering the necessary data. In the '60's weather stories were just after the fact disaster stories. It wasn't possible to have stories like we have today about coming storms, heat waves, etc.

 

Yes, we had some of that too. I remember riding my bike home from school and some of the kids were pretty happy that we were let out early.

 

IIRC the story that got Dan Rather noticed by the powers that be at CBS was in the early sixties when a hurricane was approaching Houston and he went to the local weather service where they were tracking it and had his cameraman focus on the radarscope to give updates on its approach; nobody had ever done that before.

 

Then: the weather.
Now: EXTREME WEATHER!!!

 

At one point, every time a TV broadcast was interrupted my first reaction was "who's been shot now?"

I'm always amazed when I see the video of the JFK assassination interruptions and how they kept going back to their regular programming. But it is understandable when you consider how difficult it was to get an impromptu TV broadcast up and running back then. There was one event in the 1970s , I think, where one network just has a shot of an empty anchor chair for quite awhile.

 

The first TV satellite was Telstar, launched in 1962. The first live TV broadcast from the US to Europe was July 23, 1962 anchored by Cronkite.

It was also the birth of the British invasion - Telstar by The Tornados was the first single by a British band to reach number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and was also a number one hit in the UK.

 

I was too young to be let loose--1st grade. This was a small VERY suburban (farms nearby) neighborhood school and the thinking was that if you had to cross a street, you should be picked up if you were that young. No crossing guards, that was only done in big cities)

 

Now most news is about entertainment and who can be more audacious or outrageous. Sad state of affairs.

 

Sure it was a historic occasion, but there was no need to interrupt regularly scheduled programming just to say that a helicopter carrying one of the principals had landed.

 

I remember in the 70's, the NBA playoffs and, believe it or not, the finals were tape delayed and shown after 11pm news. At least in my city. No NBA team close by.

I know that has nothing to do with Op's topic. Just something that came to me.

I do remember, as a child, when Gary Gilmore was executed. It really freaked me out seeing the drawings of Gilmore strapped to chair, I believe with a hood. Those artist renderings were quite creepy to me anyway. But knowing somebody was shot to death was terrifying.

 

These are right on the mark.
That goofy sensationalist practice of saying "xx millions of Americans are threatened and in harm way" may simply mean that Chicago or New York has a chance of getting a thunderstorm. And often it ends up a rainshower.

And as for the network news or the morning network news shows (and I use the term very loosely)...it is truly sad that ABC has gone so far down the Entertainment Tonight path with their news teams. I had some actual hope for the Good Morning America show when they first recruited George Stephenopoulos. I thought that finally here was a guy who had been on the inside in politics, was in the White House, knew what was going on and how to report it. At first, they had him doing the "harder news" and left the Kardashian-type stories to others, like that dim bulb Lara Spencer. But rather quickly, old George started reporting more on Hollywood and now he's as bad as all of those surrounding him. And each morning they boldly announce BREAKING NEWS (more sensationalization) - which usually is something that is not even news at all, but something as important for the world to know like Angelina Jolie having Bell's Palsy, which is usually only temporary and certainly not life threatening. Sad really.