Question regarding live TV coverage of Vietnam

In the course of writing a book that deals with events from the 1960s and 1970s, I spoke with someone who recalls regularly scheduled TV programming being interrupted for live updates from Vietnam. I’m skeptical that the technology for this to happen existed until fairly late in the war, if at all (the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love broadcast in late 1967 was the first live worldwide satellite broadcast, as I understand it). Obviously the moon landing was broadcast live in 1969, again, as I understand it, but the networks knew when that was going to happen. They didn’t just break in to regular programming with no advance warning. But it’s difficult to prove a negative. For those video or TV historians here, or just for those who lived through the 60s and 70s, do you recall any time where one of three networks would have cut into a drama or sitcom or game show for live Vietnam coverage? If so, when, approximately did this become commonplace? Or was coverage of the war confined only to the regular nightly newcasts of the era?

 

No I do not. 6 o'clock news only, or maybe a prime time special about the war (which were rare)

 

That’s what I thought. On top of the technical issue of when it first would have been possible to create a live satellite link-up to the other side of the world, I’m assuming that the time difference between the USA and the other side of the world would have created additional obstacles.

 

Opinion | The First Televised War

This is an interesting read. Can't comment on the OP, though... good luck for your project!

 

Perhaps memory is playing tricks...Here is a news report from the CBS Evening News. It sort of has a 'live"/"As it happens", feel to it, so maybe when remembering it the details got lost, etc. Also, the report seems so long compared to today's news coverage.

 

I think that’s what happened with the person I spoke to: i.e., he remembers a piece like this as being broadcast “live” when in fact it wasn’t. Watching the recent Ken Burns Vietnam documentary, one feels like one sees certain battles and events live and in real time, or near to it, but I assume Burns had access to, and spliced together, far more footage than would have been shown on US television at the time.

 

Thanks for the article. As I suspected, the author there remembers that in 1967 he still had to have film flown back to the States before it could be shown on the news. By the early 70s, would the reporters have been using videotape and/or satellite transmission? Can anyone recommend a book or online resource that would give a timeline of when various technical advances in television broadcasting first took place?

 

That's what I remember. I used to watch war reports as a kid every night on the evening news, but never recall anything being described as live.

 

There were no nightly or any live updates - Was it covered nightly? Yes. Live? No

 

I only recall broadcast interruptions for assassination attempts and those PLEASE STAND BY slides when the signal was lost.

Everything I saw related to Vietnam was clearly film.

 

No, this never happened. Whoever told you this either has a poor memory or is pulling your leg.

 

The technology was not available for the live broadcasts people are used to today.

Any film (not video tape) that was shot would have to be developed and flown back from Vietnam.

The closest thing to live would be a news anchor reading wire service or network copy transmitted by a reporter in the field.

 

Yes, in the 1960s, live news events were still very rare, especially from 8000 miles away (Vietnam to NY). It was almost always 16mm newsfilm. Even in the 1970s, we didn't have live video from the Vietnam War. They did cover some protests and hearings in Washington live (or on videotape), because that was comparatively simple. I can't recall even seeing much videotape from Vietnam in that era, because the equipment was heavy, clunky, and prone to failure under conditions of high heat and humidity. Film could hold up, especially 16mm reversal newsfilm.

They did sometimes have the reporter verbally narrate the news footage live over a phone line, so the news was pretty current up to air time. I can recall Dan Rather doing this kind of thing. Even Walter Cronkite himself went to the war zone on occasion.

What were absolutely live were editorials against the war. Here's the famous one where Cronkite finally came out against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which led LBJ to say, "well, if I've lost Cronkite, we've lost Middle America."