The first hour after JFK was shot in Dallas, visual timeline and amazing quality WTIC aircheck

The Paley Center for Media has an aircheck from the main feed of the CBS Radio Network of November 22, 1963 that starts more than an hour before the assassination bulletins start coming in. It's a typical mid-morning show aimed at housewives. Lots of laundry and dish soap commercials. That kind of thing. Very early 1960's light and jovial. You can practically see the two hosts in their tweed jackets, skinny ties, pipes, and horn rimmed glasses. "Mad Men" all the way. The tone is very much self-assured. Subtly cocky or smug in a way that America was in the earliest part of the 1960's where we were absolutely, in our own minds at least, top dog and there was no stopping us. Even though everyone probably felt things were hanging by a thread, we still had that hope.

Then the bulletins start, and you can slowly hear "the sixties" as we (or at least I) now remember them start. The self-assured tone vanishes from the hosts...the joking stops...and it gets very somber. The seeds of the late 1960's doubt and cynicism about the country and world are planted and it's audible. That subtextual cockiness vanishes. A complete loss of innocence accomplished in less than thirty seconds. Sure, the self-assured tone of the announcers will reappear as the year progresses and the country moves on, but it will never get back that subtle undercurrent of hope and truly believing in that hope like it was an hour before 12 noon, November 22, 1963.

It was an incredibly fascinating listen. We all know the aftermath of the assassination to our collective psyche but to hear it as it happens with over an hour of context before it occurred was fascinating.

 

It is fascinating listening and we are aware, even though the people on the radio are not, that life will literally never be the same again.

 

I love watching old news reports of important events as they break and unfold. It's just fascinating to watch.

 

Fascinating. I'd like to see similar time-lines for other important historical events.

One photograph I didn't expect to see was the one of boys playing cricket in a street in Leeds, England, in 1954! It pops up about 23 minutes in, during the chat about peg-ball. I've located roughly where it was taken, but as the whole area was totally redeveloped some years ago, I'm not 100% certain as to the precise location, and will need to consult contemporary maps.