I’m this video’s producer, Doug Bertel, writing on its 10th anniversary (2023). Over the decade since it was published, many viewers have questioned why WTIC did not break the news on its radio stations until 20 minutes had elapsed since the first wire service bulletin arrived at 1:34 p.m. as well as 14 minutes after CBS first interrupted programming on its television station (WFSB today) at 1:40 p.m. Although I don’t know for certain, after further study I have concluded that at least 13 minutes could be missing from the audio recording. Here is what I have considered. * According to the 1963 radio schedules printed in "The Hartford Courant" newspaper, "Mikeline’s" start-time was 1:15 p.m. * It’s unlikely that "Mikeline" would have started as late as 1:28 p.m. that Friday without Floyd Richards and Bob Ellsworth commenting on it. Similarly, before the first report of the shooting in Dallas they give no indication that the program is running out of time even though the "Courant" lists a 2:05 p.m. start time for Dick Bertel's "Americana" show. * The first bulletin that Mr. Ellsworth reads at 1:54 p.m. in the timeline (“President Kennedy is reported to have been wounded by an assassin…”) matches the 1:40 p.m. flash from United Press International. * He adds, “there are no further details available at this time.” That would have been true around 1:40 p.m. but by 1:54 p.m. much more information was available (although not all of it was accurate). * The next bulletin (“President Kennedy and Governor John B. Connally of Texas were cutdown by an assassin’s bullets”), which is read at 1:56 p.m. in the timeline, was issued by UPI at 1:41 p.m. * From 29:21 to 29:42 in the video and at 1:57 p.m. in the timeline, Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Richards excitedly billboard with palpable relief that an NBC Hotline update is coming "in about 30 seconds." However, the recording doesn’t include it and they make no further comment about it. * A second later at 29:43 though, there is a distinct change as if there is an edit and/or splice there. Also, there is a shift in the ambient noise, suggesting that the studio door had been propped open to make it more efficient for members of the newsroom to move in and out. * Immediately following these audio anomalies, Mr. Richards and Mr. Ellsworth now seem to be unexpectedly comfortable with their breaking news assignment as they inexplicably follow an established rhythm, one reading a wire report while the other prepares to share the next one. * At 1:58 p.m. in the timeline, Mr. Richards appends the remark "which we said earlier" to an Associated Press report that the shots were fired "as the motorcade entered a triple underpass." However, there is no previous mention of a triple underpass in the recording. * Still at 1:58 p.m., he reads more from the AP: “Rep. Albert Thomas of Texas says he has been informed that both President Kennedy and Gov. John Connally of Texas are still alive…” This was sent at 1:57 p.m., creating a 17-minute gap between the bulletins heard here. If some of the audio is missing, it unfortunately appears as though the gap occurred after the news was broken locally and before the 2:00 p.m. NBC hourly newscast began. In any case, the 1963 WTIC staff should probably be extended the benefit of the doubt.
I mentioned a possibility in a comment that must have been erased, that the staff in the WITC newsroom may have been in lunch at 1:35, when UPI broke the news, of the shooting, and the studio used by Mikeline was probably soundproofed, so the hosts would not have heard any bells. Perhaps the Mikeline producer was also isolated from the newsroom. I don't know if call-in shows insisted that their callers not have their radios on back then, so it's likely the callers would have been unaware of the events in Dallas, barring the unlikely event that their homes had either a UPI, AP, or Reuters teletype machine, or perhaps that they were listening to an ABC Radio station...this was 1963, so nobody outside of the Metroplex in Texas heard the 1232(CST) report by the Dallas radio station by the reporter listening to the chatter on Dallas police radio, and running with his report that things had gone VERY wrong in the JFK motorcade.
This is an incredible piece you put together. The unfolding tragic events with the backdrop of the innocence of a fun radio talk show, with the related pictures. Wow. There really was two worlds going on simultaneously. One happy and one so sad. This really captures how everything transitioned and changed that day, so suddenly. Excellent work!
Oh, that poor sweet lady with the recipe. You can hear the shock and grief in her voice, The moderator of the show was also unsure and rattled too. This wasn’t the kind of thing they were used to handling, Not what any of us were used to handling, when she couldn’t go on I felt her pain. God bless her. 😭
20 years earlier, America had been pulled into WW2. So interesting how innocent our country became after WW2... we thought there would be no more wars and everything would be good like the '20s again.
Comprehensive, fascinating and sobering. This is one of the best time capsules I've seen on that day, along with the segment from KLIF. What sets this one apart is the timeline that accompanies the audio. Outstanding job, Mr. Bertel.
By the time she finishes her advice on the garbage cans its over, it happened so fast and the people talking have no idea their world just changed.Its kind of haunting.
I’m more shocked that people were raw dogging their metal garbage cans with trash in 1963 like cavemen and that garbage bags weren’t a widespread thing by then
I've heard this program before, and wondering how events were unfolding as the program progressed. THANK YOU for providing this info, as well as background info on the radio personalities. The pictures add so much to the overall experience! Done with great care and wonderfully done!
I was 16 when i saw the towers in NYC came down collapsing. I remember turning to my mum who was stunned beyond words asking her, 'What do we do now?'...Some years later, i saw the clip of a buncha people gathered around a car in black n white listening to Edwin Newman on the JFK assassination coverage. In that clip tere was a teenage black girl interviewed by the corresponding reporter, i was astonished to her reaction...which was similar to mine on 9/11/2001. She said, 'Right now...i just don't know what to do'. It was shocking...a horrible event...
I only heard it now 56 yrs after the assassination of JFK when I picked this up on YT and that ladies' reaction, the anguish in her voice pretty much sums it all up for me. I was telling my daughter about it and I got all chocked up. Yes, I agree with the one comment -- from a happy, relaxed Friday aft radio phone-in afternoon with recipes , advice and gorgeoues radio ads with such gentle voices and jingles to shock, horror and heartbreak. Yes, the world never was the same again.
@@joaquinpraveenvishnu8509 Unfortunately, we now know that our own government was complicit in that horrifying event; those who died were considered collateral damage. 😞
I agree. I was 5, and at my aunt's house, when it happened. I remember the news break but I really didn't understand what it meant. But my aunt did, she immediately started to cry. I don't remember anything else that day, I must remained in my little 5 year old world both before and after, completely oblivious to the historic significance of the moment.
I grew up listening to WTIC. Bob Ellsworth, Floyd “Hap” Richards and Dick Bertel were familiar friends and voices in my grandparents’ home. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear ‘TIC that day. Someone in our school had a transistor radio tuned to another station and it was from CBS Radio’s Allan Jackson that I heard the announcement that President Kennedy had died. I didn’t hear this recording for many decades after. What you hear in this recording is representative of the very high quality of WTIC exuded. It is a shame that the standards of that era have gone by the wayside.
Yes it would be nice if we all slowed down,but we as a society today are more in the deathgrip of the banksters and the corporatists,the predatory unfettered capitalists that are trying to work us all to death as their slaves,thus people are unnaturally hurried and rushed,chasing the almighty dollar.Those of us who are spiritually wise have conquered impatience and understand the wiles of our overlord enemies (including the ones that murdered the Kennedys)
Actually quite eerie listening to the first half of this aircheck of WTIC's radio coverage while seeing the description of what was happening in Dallas and beyond on that day.
Wow. I was not alive but I could feel the tension and uncertainty during this tragic as the nation was about to go into mourning. My first big national tragedy was in 1986, with the Challenger disaster. I love WTIC'S presentation, KLIF'S presentation is pretty icey and straight to the point.
@@arthurweems2839 I was 5 in 1963. I saw the first bulletin while I was at my grandmother's house. I ran into the hallway to interrupt my grandma's phone call to tell her.
This may have been recorded on one reel-to-reel tape deck, strung to a reel on a second deck, and the output of that second deck went on the air. It would be set up for a delay of seven or eight seconds so that any foul language would be bleeped out and not go on the air. The taping for the delay to avoid broadcasting foul language may be the only reason WTIC Radio's coverage of the initial news even exists.
.. I started crying at the first report, as the cake recipe caller did ; you just ...knew; the impact.....forward, or backwards....then, and now ...still gets you in the gut. I felt the same listening to Bob Dylan's recent song about that day,worth a very emotional listen.
Thanks for putting this on, fascinating listening. As a young guy from Scotland it all sounds like another world. Great idea for a radio show as well, at least before Facebook and Google where the solution to every problem can be found!
Thank you for sharing this fascinating recording. Great sound quality and professional announcers. No fake news here. Just the facts and compassion, no opinions as today.
Wow what a piece of history and this is a radio clip. The two hosts handled this like a pro in a shock moment of the first bulletins that changed that whole weekend completely. I have heard and seen many clips of that day but this far this one is the best especially the one with the German sweet chocolate recipe that she could not go on.
Incredible quality. The difference between this and today's instant news is startling. Still giving recipes even after the initial announcement. Extraordinary.
I like this call in show… It’s like the old-fashioned version of crowdsourcing or looking at something on Google or Wikipedia… Rather than asking to Google, people called up and asked their community… Much more personal if you ask me also the collars and presenters are all very well spoken and polite and articulate and the whole entire place is much more mellow than anything around today
Jenny Kennedy I was born in 1961 and remember our local radio station had a show like this. It was a very different time then. It was the age of local radio being a big part of your information gathering. News was just on TV during the week with a 6 PM local newscast and a 6:30 PM world news broadcast , usually from New York. On the weekend there was a local newscast but the world news broadcast was usually just 15 minutes long.
Love stuff like this! This kind of innocuous broadcast was going on in tens of thousands of radio and TV stations all over the world. I've worked in radio stations that had UPI teletype machines. When that thing rang 5 bells (the max) a chill went up your spine and you prayed it wasn't WW3.
This is captivating, important and chilling at the same time. I was 8 when it happened and have tried to hear and watch as much about that day as possible- your timeline makes the difference. As another commenter said, it was like living in two worlds at one time.I remember my mother crying the whole weekend- I'm know she wasn't the only one...
I was 9 at the time. remember my teacher came into the classroom, and she was crying. they dismissed school, and I walked home with a friend, kind of in a daze. always will remember that day. but I tell you, jean hill seemed to be pretty sure the shot(or shots) came from the hill. might be something to that.
YEAH WHOLE COUNTRY WAS IN GRIEF and it seemed everything stopped from fri to tuesday............ a note we went to local bakery that Sunday morn and there was a bakery there, parents said you can have cupcakes and such bought a doz and dad spent 3.49 for the dozen................stuf we never got because it was so expensive
I’m stunned at how long it took to air the first news bulletin on WTIC. They must have had both an AP and UPI teletype. They would have been ringing almost continuously after around 1:40pm.
I am wondering if no one was checking the teletype in the newsroom. Possibly the news people were at lunch and the two on-air announcers had no idea to occasionally check the AP wire. The national ABC radio music show broke in just a few minutes after it happened with Don Gardner.
@@davewanamaker3690 If I had to guess, the show's producer was probably not in the same room as the newsroom, but perhaps in a control room The producer's two main functions here were to make sure the signal went out, and to make sure the commercials(one recorded and two "live spots") went on the air at their scheduled time. Presumably the newsroom staffer got back from lunch around 1:53(just after the live spot for the Hartford Courant), and saw the bulletins, and the staffer read them, then passed the news onto Bob Ellsworth, where he read the news live.
A young Robert MacNeil who was only 32 when reporting this event. He would later form the well know MacNeil/Lehrer duo for many years. Thankfully still around at age 88. He's been active with NBC since 1956.
Jim Lehrer also covered the events in Dallas, as a reporter for the Dallas Times-Herald, a fishwrap with a mid-day deadline. He and MacNeil joked in a later presentation at the Newseum (R.I.P.)that they were in proximty of each other that day, but never met then. (That Newseum presentation is on UA-cam.)
I saw where her daughter finally got to hear this tape just within the past few years. The mother, who passed away some years back, had always said she was on the telephone with a radio call-in show when the news broke that President Kennedy had been shot. However, the daughter had no idea that a tape of the program still existed.
If I had been in the situation of hosting "Mikeline", after hearing the bulletin, I would have asked on-air to my engineer: "I want my engineer, John Doe, to monitor the NBC Radio Network feed and if they have any bulletins, cut me off immediately so we can carry these bulletins".
altfactor It appears that no one at WTIC monitored the network until after the first wires bulletins. NBC had an alert system as well, but (my guess) WTIC either wasn't equipped with it or it was malfunctioning.
Roz Fishman could not have known her recipe call would coincide with this momentous and shocking event's announcement. "I don't feel like it" - and who can blame her. I doubt anyone called in that day with information on the best time to trim young maple trees, despite the caller's question.
I don't really want to use the words "my favorite" when talking about JFK coverage, because "favorite" implies that you enjoyed something, and news of a murder is NEVER enjoyable. But for me, it's this video, more than any other, that shows just how *normal* this Friday was for so many people, right before the world changed forever. You're talking about normal, "trivial" stuff like how to clean a tent, and then, wham.
Only the most stupid and/or wilfully ignorant people would infer from your comment that saying "favorite" was in the context of perverse entertainment. Sadly, President Kennedy's murder does form part of a ghoulish fascination for many, so much so that they have become inured to the horror depicted in the footage of his death.
9 days after my 10th birthday. Normal Friday at school until I got home, found out later that the principal at school decided it would be better if our parents told us.
I've heard about schools getting out early with the news. They announced the death just as our school let out for the day. Possibly the other schools in the area who let out at 3 p.m. were sent home early.
Great job putting all the info together into a coherent timeline. Fascinating and horrifying. Poor Mrs Kennedy had to be in complete shock, but she was very clear-headed the whole time. Pretty incredible.
Thanks for putting this together. I've never read so much detail about what happened in which minute that day. I hope with as many different radio stations that have been posted that someone will find & post audio from my 2 home area stations WGY in Schenectady & WSM in Nashville, or any station from those markets.
I was in the 1st grade at Good Shepherd Catholic School in Manhattan, Nuns crying in the hallway, we were told the president was hurt. Went home early on a sunny Friday afternoon.
Very well done ! I have watched a few times and get chills every time . If this were happening today , the radio station would switch to its national network and have non stop analysis and , early on , speculation
Not ever. It was the first time I saw my dad cry. That weekend I realized Caroline and John Jr. would grow up without a daddy. I was seven. A punch in the gut.
Great job! People were so civilized on WTIC in those days. Now it is so nasty on all the AM radio stations. Things sounded so much better in those days. I was only one and a half years old then, so I don't remember.
There was more of a veneer of civility in those days...I'm not sure that people were fundamentally any different (better or worse) than they are today.
I couldn't help but think of what it would have been like to be home alone in the middle of the day and hearing this horrifying news. Hearing the easy listening music they played after the top of the hour seemed sort of eerie, especially as bulletins were announced over it.
Don't know if anyone else has done this in a comment, and if it's not allowed, you can take it down! But the news about the potential assassination comes in at a few seconds after the 26 minute mark. This is an absolutely great example of how a news event like that can change an absolutely ordinary day. I'm not in the eastern USA, I'm in another part of the country, and I was only a small child when President Kennedy was killed. But, the same thing certainly happened for September 11, 2001. Absolutely ordinary days, that became etched in our national conscience for the extraordinary and tragic events that transpired
I remember 9/11. It was a totally unremarkable day. We had just bought a new kitchen table and chairs on Sunday. On Monday we discovered we had some type of rodent in our house (it was a rat) which had gotten in due to a hole left by the HVAC repairman. Tuesday morning I went to work as usual. About 9 a.m. a co-worker casually asked me if I had any batteries. I didn't and asked her why. She wanted to power up a little television she had in her office because she'd heard a plane hit the World Trade Center. And suddenly it wasn't just another Tuesday morning.
The community feel of this station is very interesting and is clearly a lost art today . There is a very local horizontal exchange of ideas which is very mundane sounding but does work to build something we are missing in this nation:community.
These are wonderful recordings from a historical perspective,wonder how many radio and TV stations around the country handled the terrible news on air as it happened
The Mantovani music only adds to the poignancy. The last gasps of an innocent time. I was born less than two years later, but still shed tears over the good things we’ve lost since.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we still lived in a world where the biggest topics of discussion for the every day person was garbage cans ,your dog ,and German chocolate cake?
What is completely nuts about this video is how these people are just phoning into an unassuming radio show with their housekeeping tips, while the (I suppose) real-time updates are saying what's going on at that exact moment, and they're all completely unaware of it. At the moment you were discussing the best way to cook gravy, the last drops of life are being squeezed out of JFK, and you have no idea. I find that mind-blowing to think about.
I don't think Oswald did it with help or alone. He denied both shootings and is on record as saying he did NOT even know he was a suspect on Kennedy until he heard it from the press. Even when Oswald was shot Johnson called during his surgery demanding a DEATH BED confession. Very strange indeed.
I think the witnesses who said it came from the grassy knoll and the witnesses who said it came from the school book building were both correct which is why shot number 2 and 3 happened within 1 or 2 seconds.
From strictly a technical viewpoint its Amazing quality as well as production. With today's cell phones and zoom calls everything narrow and garbled sounding and cutting out half the time, its nice to hear how professional the olden days were. Our broadcast quality technology seems to have taken giant leaps backwards.
Excellent job with the timeline, especially as it relates to the events in Trauma Room 1. I never was aware that Kennedy actually died at 12:50pm, but that the time was fudged a bit so it could have been on record that he received the Last Rites before he died. Since it was able to offer his widow some small measure of comfort, completely understandable. 12:50pm or 1:00pm, what difference did it make? We’re only talking about the final cessation of autonomic body functions, anyway- everything that made the man JFK was gone at 12:30pm.
The man had no brain in his open skull at 12:31pm. The idea that the priests were reading last rites to a living person with no brain in his skull has always been ridiculous, but it makes for a great story for a Catholic whose corrupt family bought him the Presidency.
I am amazed that this is intact 50 years later...with high quality, too. Wikipedia says that this is one of only four known airchecks outside of Dallas/Fort Worth which are known to exist from that day. As for the first bulletin, it's at the 26:15 mark. (R.I.P. JFK 1917-1963) :'(
+katzrule34 There are air checks from WCCO of Minneapolis and WLW out on Cincinnati. WGN of Chicago has a brief air check also. Just search youtube for JFK assassination and there will be a number of air checks that come up.
I believe several airchecks exist of the 1:30-2:30 P M. EST outside of Dallas/Fort Worth: WTIC, WGN Chicago, KNX Los Angeles, and WCCO Minneapolis/St. Paul.
***** Not to be picky, just to help you catalog them, "allude" should be "elude" around 49:22. Even so, fabulous job with this, Doug. I wish I could find much such well done timelines like this.
Philip Undisclosed As I alluded to the beautiful photo of me, I found myself eluding the vanity assassins! However, upon awakening, I found it all to be an illusion, that I was still butt-ugly...
I know that communications then were nowhere near as instantaneous as they are today, but I am a bit surprised at how long it took for these guys to report the bulletin. Mainly because if we follow the timeline offered here, all three television networks had already gone to air with the news, as well as UPI and AP. You would think that a caller might even have delivered the news to them.
As you may imagine, it was something they had to absolutely verify the report, before announcing it on the air. Management was stalling, waiting for a secondary source reporting it.
Well done with the news as it happened that you put on the screen. I am amazed that a tape was rolling during the show. Did they make it a habit to tape those old local shows?
To prevent profanity from making it to air during a live audience participation show like "Mikeline," WTIC's engineers had implemented an analog tape delay system that recorded the studio output and then played that recorded audio to the transmitter several seconds later. (If some word or phrase needed to be cut, a push of a button would switch the transmitter feed to the live studio output and remain that way until it could be reset during the next available break.) That tape delay system is most likely the source of this recording. Thanks for the compliment, Dave!
Note that the NBC Radio newscast at 2 P.M. EST did not have the usual sounder (a beep-beep-beep tone along with notes played by a kettle drum) that the network's hourly radio newscasts of the period usually had.
I note from many radio reports that doctors state JFK exhibited minor or shallow breathing and there was detected a faint heart beat. Are there any docs reading this who can state how this is possible after having so much of one's occipital-parietal blown away? Some state further that JFK was actually DOA before the limo drove under the triple underpass.
I'm no doctor, but if I remember from anatomy class, heartbeat and breathing are essentially reflexive, partially controlled by the medulla oblongata, which is below the occipital lobe. I would guess that that area of the nervous system might have still been active for a while after the shooting. Nerves can still function for a little while if intact after losing consistent oxygen or blood supply, and the heart can self-stimulate itself to a point as well (this is why the heart still beats if it is removed). I hope that's accurate, I haven't done anatomy in a long time.
On February 26, 2023, WTNH's Dennis house interviewed one of these announcers, Dick Bertel. Among the topics were the JFK and MLK assassinations. www.wtnh.com/on-air/thisweekinconnecticut/this-week-in-connecticut-broadcasting-legend-looks-back-on-biggest-moments-in-career/
One minute they're blathering on about chocolate cake recipes and how to clean a tent and the next, a history changing tragedy hits from completely out of the blue.
I wonder what stations without network affiliation did. I assume they read wire copy (was a station required to have a wire or some news service at the time) but it would be interesting to hear what stations with meager resources did in the face of this tragedy.
Joe Postove Many stations, believe it or not, phoned random Dallas residents, and offered them money to tune into KLIF, etc, and run their audio through the phone for rebroadcast!
I worked in small market radio for a number of years, we had an Associated Press wire machine in a room adjacent to the control room. When a bulletin came in the AP machine would start dinging incessantly. A heads up announcer or newsman would immediately check the machine.
What's striking to me is how long it took word to get out. Even as of 2:18 Eastern, 48 minutes later, they're still reporting that the President is alive but critical.
That was the information they had at that time. The death of President Kennedy was not announced until 13:33(1:33 PM CT) or 14:33(2:33 PM CT) and then it took time to get the story on the wires
Also remember they were relaying everything by telephone. The lines were jammed and the connections were bad. Also, reputable news outlets did not report anyone's death until it had been confirmed by a unimpeachable source. Cronkite reports that Dan Rather and one of the priests said Kennedy was dead, but IT WAS NOT CONFIRMED. Until the official White House spokesman said Kennedy was dead, they would not say he was.
@@paulsonj72The JFK death was announced officially by Malcolm Kilduff, the acting press secretary who was on JFK's Texas trip, and CBS TV, along with NBC, ran with that. CBS radio had made the call earlier, based on the reporting of both Dan Rather and KRLD-TV's Eddy Barker, both of whom had sources in Parkland Hospital and within the Dallas Police. I think ABC (either radio or TV) announced the JFK death ahead of the Kilduff announcement.
It should be noted that WTIC's sister TV station, WTIC-3, was a CBS affiliate and ran "ATWT" when CBS' first bulletin broke. The channel's listings appeared in the New York City edition of TV Guide and was noteworthy as the nearest station outside of New York that aired Giants home games from Yankee Stadium that were blacked out in the Big Apple. The Giants hosted the then-St. Louis Cardinals the following Sunday, but CBS suspended NFL coverage along with all scheduled programming.
That's a fascinating note of the NFL blackout era. I remember that if the Eagles were playing the Giants in Philly (except for 1970 and 1972, when those were Monday Night Football games, on a school night), my father took us to see our grandmother, who lived in Waretown, NJ, a place that got the NYC TV stations as well as the Philly TV channels, and we saw those games on Channel 2, the CBS-TV outlet in the NYC area. I suspect that Giants fans living on Staten Island and in the Perth Amboy/New Brunswick areas turned their TV antennae to Channel 10 in Philadelphia, the CBS TV affiliate in the blackout days
They would not have known unless the teletype machine in the newsroom went off or until they got a bulletin from the network or unless a reporter called them. They announced it as quickly as NBC passed the news on--and they would have confirmed the news first. Responsible reporters did not pass on news in those days unless they had official confirmation. Note all the instances on this video where people said "the president is dead" (including Dan Rather) but the networks all said that it was NOT AN OFFICIAL announcement. Only when the White House announced it did the networks announce it as "official."
I’m this video’s producer, Doug Bertel, writing on its 10th anniversary (2023). Over the decade since it was published, many viewers have questioned why WTIC did not break the news on its radio stations until 20 minutes had elapsed since the first wire service bulletin arrived at 1:34 p.m. as well as 14 minutes after CBS first interrupted programming on its television station (WFSB today) at 1:40 p.m. Although I don’t know for certain, after further study I have concluded that at least 13 minutes could be missing from the audio recording. Here is what I have considered.
* According to the 1963 radio schedules printed in "The Hartford Courant" newspaper, "Mikeline’s" start-time was 1:15 p.m.
* It’s unlikely that "Mikeline" would have started as late as 1:28 p.m. that Friday without Floyd Richards and Bob Ellsworth commenting on it. Similarly, before the first report of the shooting in Dallas they give no indication that the program is running out of time even though the "Courant" lists a 2:05 p.m. start time for Dick Bertel's "Americana" show.
* The first bulletin that Mr. Ellsworth reads at 1:54 p.m. in the timeline (“President Kennedy is reported to have been wounded by an assassin…”) matches the 1:40 p.m. flash from United Press International.
* He adds, “there are no further details available at this time.” That would have been true around 1:40 p.m. but by 1:54 p.m. much more information was available (although not all of it was accurate).
* The next bulletin (“President Kennedy and Governor John B. Connally of Texas were cutdown by an assassin’s bullets”), which is read at 1:56 p.m. in the timeline, was issued by UPI at 1:41 p.m.
* From 29:21 to 29:42 in the video and at 1:57 p.m. in the timeline, Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Richards excitedly billboard with palpable relief that an NBC Hotline update is coming "in about 30 seconds." However, the recording doesn’t include it and they make no further comment about it.
* A second later at 29:43 though, there is a distinct change as if there is an edit and/or splice there. Also, there is a shift in the ambient noise, suggesting that the studio door had been propped open to make it more efficient for members of the newsroom to move in and out.
* Immediately following these audio anomalies, Mr. Richards and Mr. Ellsworth now seem to be unexpectedly comfortable with their breaking news assignment as they inexplicably follow an established rhythm, one reading a wire report while the other prepares to share the next one.
* At 1:58 p.m. in the timeline, Mr. Richards appends the remark "which we said earlier" to an Associated Press report that the shots were fired "as the motorcade entered a triple underpass." However, there is no previous mention of a triple underpass in the recording.
* Still at 1:58 p.m., he reads more from the AP: “Rep. Albert Thomas of Texas says he has been informed that both President Kennedy and Gov. John Connally of Texas are still alive…” This was sent at 1:57 p.m., creating a 17-minute gap between the bulletins heard here.
If some of the audio is missing, it unfortunately appears as though the gap occurred after the news was broken locally and before the 2:00 p.m. NBC hourly newscast began. In any case, the 1963 WTIC staff should probably be extended the benefit of the doubt.
I mentioned a possibility in a comment that must have been erased, that the staff in the WITC newsroom may have been in lunch at 1:35, when UPI broke the news, of the shooting, and the studio used by Mikeline was probably soundproofed, so the hosts would not have heard any bells. Perhaps the Mikeline producer was also isolated from the newsroom. I don't know if call-in shows insisted that their callers not have their radios on back then, so it's likely the callers would have been unaware of the events in Dallas, barring the unlikely event that their homes had either a UPI, AP, or Reuters teletype machine, or perhaps that they were listening to an ABC Radio station...this was 1963, so nobody outside of the Metroplex in Texas heard the 1232(CST) report by the Dallas radio station by the reporter listening to the chatter on Dallas police radio, and running with his report that things had gone VERY wrong in the JFK motorcade.
The Dallas radio station was WFAA, and their reporter who broke the report was John Allen, listening to Dallas police radio chatter.
This is an incredible piece you put together. The unfolding tragic events with the backdrop of the innocence of a fun radio talk show, with the related pictures. Wow. There really was two worlds going on simultaneously. One happy and one so sad. This really captures how everything transitioned and changed that day, so suddenly. Excellent work!
Wonderful tribute and an important document of world history Doug
Oh, that poor sweet lady with the recipe. You can hear the shock and grief in her voice, The moderator of the show was also unsure and rattled too. This wasn’t the kind of thing they were used to handling, Not what any of us were used to handling, when she couldn’t go on I felt her pain. God bless her. 😭
20 years earlier, America had been pulled into WW2. So interesting how innocent our country became after WW2... we thought there would be no more wars and everything would be good like the '20s again.
Yup, President Kennedy has been shot, ok Ms. you’re on the air!
It wouldn’t be until September 11, 2001 that people would be as rattled as they were on that awful day in 1963.
@@collegeman1988 Try December 8/9, 1980. The whole world stood still. Not just young people. Everyone had been affected by his presence.
I also could feel her sadness. Just awful.
Doug-- You did a wonderful job putting this together. I was glued to it. Thanks for putting in all the time it took to create this.
Comprehensive, fascinating and sobering. This is one of the best time capsules I've seen on that day, along with the segment from KLIF. What sets this one apart is the timeline that accompanies the audio. Outstanding job, Mr. Bertel.
america....your were wounded that day.
agreed
By the time she finishes her advice on the garbage cans its over, it happened so fast and the people talking have no idea their world just changed.Its kind of haunting.
And it continues for an excruciating amount of time before they get to it.
It had to have been quite a gut punch.
You mean…”gahhh-bage”.
I’m more shocked that people were raw dogging their metal garbage cans with trash in 1963 like cavemen and that garbage bags weren’t a widespread thing by then
I've heard this program before, and wondering how events were unfolding as the program progressed. THANK YOU for providing this info, as well as background info on the radio personalities. The pictures add so much to the overall experience! Done with great care and wonderfully done!
This deserves many more views. It's an amazing timeline of a terrible day.
Agreed !!!
Yes. I've checked out some national broadcasts but liked hearing how a local station handled it.
The report comes in at the 26:18 time mark. I considering the age of this recording, it sounds clear as new.
Kinda heartbreaking, the woman who can't continue with the recipe at 28:40. Very understandable.
I was 16 when i saw the towers in NYC came down collapsing. I remember turning to my mum who was stunned beyond words asking her, 'What do we do now?'...Some years later, i saw the clip of a buncha people gathered around a car in black n white listening to Edwin Newman on the JFK assassination coverage. In that clip tere was a teenage black girl interviewed by the corresponding reporter, i was astonished to her reaction...which was similar to mine on 9/11/2001. She said, 'Right now...i just don't know what to do'.
It was shocking...a horrible event...
Steve 😂
I only heard it now 56 yrs after the assassination of JFK when I picked this up on YT and that ladies' reaction, the anguish in her voice pretty much sums it all up for me. I was telling my daughter about it and I got all chocked up. Yes, I agree with the one comment -- from a happy, relaxed Friday aft radio phone-in afternoon with recipes , advice and gorgeoues radio ads with such gentle voices and jingles to shock, horror and heartbreak. Yes, the world never was the same again.
@@joaquinpraveenvishnu8509
Unfortunately, we now know that our own government was complicit in that horrifying event; those who died were considered collateral damage. 😞
I agree. I was 5, and at my aunt's house, when it happened. I remember the news break but I really didn't understand what it meant. But my aunt did, she immediately started to cry. I don't remember anything else that day, I must remained in my little 5 year old world both before and after, completely oblivious to the historic significance of the moment.
I grew up listening to WTIC. Bob Ellsworth, Floyd “Hap” Richards and Dick Bertel were familiar friends and voices in my grandparents’ home. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear ‘TIC that day. Someone in our school had a transistor radio tuned to another station and it was from CBS Radio’s Allan Jackson that I heard the announcement that President Kennedy had died. I didn’t hear this recording for many decades after. What you hear in this recording is representative of the very high quality of WTIC exuded. It is a shame that the standards of that era have gone by the wayside.
Wouldn't it be nice if we all slowed down and started acting like people did back then.....even during a crisis.
We were adults then.
Yes it would be nice if we all slowed down,but we as a society today are more in the deathgrip of the banksters and the corporatists,the predatory unfettered capitalists that are trying to work us all to death as their slaves,thus people are unnaturally hurried and rushed,chasing the almighty dollar.Those of us who are spiritually wise have conquered impatience and understand the wiles of our overlord enemies (including the ones that murdered the Kennedys)
Small town radio is still not that much different than this (although this is still better),I used to be able to get UP radio in and it was very nice.
Buddy Twigg: Yes,indeed.
@@bubbastill2040 And don't forget the morally bankrupt cesspool that is Washington DC.
Hearing "Moon River" after the news broke was really poignant.
Incredible presentation. I never get tired of watching this. Thank you for posting this.
I keep coming back to this too. Makes me rather sad though to think most, if not all, of those we are hearing here are likely passed away by now.
NEITHER HAVE I.
great to hear local media and day to day life on 11/22/1963
11 + 22 = the 33rd degree.
Note how pleasant and courteous all the caller's 'phone voice' were.
It was a kinder and pleasant world. People were decent and courteous.
@@keithhyttinen8275 Most people anyway.
@@keithhyttinen8275 unless you lived in the South and looked wrong
@@footballsoccerx2021 or Downtown Chicago
@@footballsoccerx2021 Or unless you live in the north and looked southern.
I'm at the 17:00 mark and this show is about turkey, tents and stenciled chairs. What a tranquil time it was until that moment!
Brian Arbenz it was kind of like about 8:30-8:45 am September 11, 2001
Actually quite eerie listening to the first half of this aircheck of WTIC's radio coverage while seeing the description of what was happening in Dallas and beyond on that day.
Wow. I was not alive but I could feel the tension and uncertainty during this tragic as the nation was about to go into mourning. My first big national tragedy was in 1986, with the Challenger disaster. I love WTIC'S presentation, KLIF'S presentation is pretty icey and straight to the point.
@@arthurweems2839 I was 5 in 1963. I saw the first bulletin while I was at my grandmother's house. I ran into the hallway to interrupt my grandma's phone call to tell her.
the quality is astounding.
Surprising that it was taped!
@@MrJoeybabe25 I'm sure they got this right off the console,not off the air
This may have been recorded on one reel-to-reel tape deck, strung to a reel on a second deck, and the output of that second deck went on the air.
It would be set up for a delay of seven or eight seconds so that any foul language would be bleeped out and not go on the air.
The taping for the delay to avoid broadcasting foul language may be the only reason WTIC Radio's coverage of the initial news even exists.
The dwindling moments of a world we'd never have.
The beginning of the end of innocence.
@@mrzoperxplex The 20th century was one of the most violent centuries in world history.Ask yourself,just how innocent were we?
@@Crezelltree4261 all so tiresome
@@Crezelltree4261 then u die..and tricked by Archons 👽 and sent bck to this prison planet 🌎 for another lifetime😡
.. I started crying at the first report, as the cake recipe caller did ; you just ...knew; the impact.....forward, or backwards....then, and now ...still gets you in the gut. I felt the same listening to Bob Dylan's recent song about that day,worth a very emotional listen.
Thanks for putting this on, fascinating listening. As a young guy from Scotland it all sounds like another world.
Great idea for a radio show as well, at least before Facebook and Google where the solution to every problem can be found!
26:20 "Floyd I have something "rather" important from the WTIC newsroom..." "Rather" has to be the biggest understatement of all time
Thank you for sharing this fascinating recording. Great sound quality and professional announcers. No fake news here. Just the facts and compassion, no opinions as today.
Wow what a piece of history and this is a radio clip. The two hosts handled this like a pro in a shock moment of the first bulletins that changed that whole weekend completely. I have heard and seen many clips of that day but this far this one is the best especially the one with the German sweet chocolate recipe that she could not go on.
This broadcast + the timeline added give the video a very spooky feel.
Incredible quality. The difference between this and today's instant news is startling. Still giving recipes even after the initial announcement. Extraordinary.
People seemed to be much more courteous in those days. I would have loved to have been a part of such a respectful community. Fascinating recording.
Whites to eachother were polite in those days. Not of you were black. Segregation in full swing.
I like this call in show… It’s like the old-fashioned version of crowdsourcing or looking at something on Google or Wikipedia… Rather than asking to Google, people called up and asked their community… Much more personal if you ask me also the collars and presenters are all very well spoken and polite and articulate and the whole entire place is much more mellow than anything around today
Jenny Kennedy I was born in 1961 and remember our local radio station had a show like this. It was a very different time then. It was the age of local radio being a big part of your information gathering. News was just on TV during the week with a 6 PM local newscast and a 6:30 PM world news broadcast , usually from New York. On the weekend there was a local newscast but the world news broadcast was usually just 15 minutes long.
I like the transposition of the horrific events occurring in Dallas over the mundane radio call in show. Well done.
Love stuff like this!
This kind of innocuous broadcast was going on in tens of thousands of radio and TV stations all over the world.
I've worked in radio stations that had UPI teletype machines.
When that thing rang 5 bells (the max) a chill went up your spine and you prayed it wasn't WW3.
😢
Amazing work synchronizing the timeline with the audio. Thank you for doing this.
This is captivating, important and chilling at the same time. I was 8 when it happened and have tried to hear and watch as much about that day as possible- your timeline makes the difference. As another commenter said, it was like living in two worlds at one time.I remember my mother crying the whole weekend- I'm know she wasn't the only one...
u were 8 that day? uh huh. got an alibi, chief?
I was 9 at the time. remember my teacher came into the classroom, and she was crying. they dismissed school, and I walked home with a friend, kind of in a daze. always will remember that day. but I tell you, jean hill seemed to be pretty sure the shot(or shots) came from the hill. might be something to that.
YEAH WHOLE COUNTRY WAS IN GRIEF and it seemed everything stopped from fri to tuesday............ a note we went to local bakery that Sunday morn and there was a bakery there, parents said you can have cupcakes and such bought a doz and dad spent 3.49 for the dozen................stuf we never got because it was so expensive
I’m stunned at how long it took to air the first news bulletin on WTIC. They must have had both an AP and UPI teletype. They would have been ringing almost continuously after around 1:40pm.
I am wondering if no one was checking the teletype in the newsroom. Possibly the news people were at lunch and the two on-air announcers had no idea to occasionally check the AP wire. The national ABC radio music show broke in just a few minutes after it happened with Don Gardner.
@@davewanamaker3690 If I had to guess, the show's producer was probably not in the same room as the newsroom, but perhaps in a control room The producer's two main functions here were to make sure the signal went out, and to make sure the commercials(one recorded and two "live spots") went on the air at their scheduled time. Presumably the newsroom staffer got back from lunch around 1:53(just after the live spot for the Hartford Courant), and saw the bulletins, and the staffer read them, then passed the news onto Bob Ellsworth, where he read the news live.
This is an absolute gem. Thank you so much.
A young Robert MacNeil who was only 32 when reporting this event. He would later form the well know MacNeil/Lehrer duo for many years. Thankfully still around at age 88. He's been active with NBC since 1956.
Jim Lehrer also covered the events in Dallas, as a reporter for the Dallas Times-Herald, a fishwrap with a mid-day deadline. He and MacNeil joked in a later presentation at the Newseum (R.I.P.)that they were in proximty of each other that day, but never met then. (That Newseum presentation is on UA-cam.)
Robert MacNeil passed recently. He was in his 90s.
the lady reading the recipe: you can hear the shock in her voice. really sums up the moment.
I saw where her daughter finally got to hear this tape just within the past few years. The mother, who passed away some years back, had always said she was on the telephone with a radio call-in show when the news broke that President Kennedy had been shot. However, the daughter had no idea that a tape of the program still existed.
If I had been in the situation of hosting "Mikeline", after hearing the bulletin, I would have asked on-air to my engineer: "I want my engineer, John Doe, to monitor the NBC Radio Network feed and if they have any bulletins, cut me off immediately so we can carry these bulletins".
altfactor It appears that no one at WTIC monitored the network until after the first wires bulletins. NBC had an alert system as well, but (my guess) WTIC either wasn't equipped with it or it was malfunctioning.
Roz Fishman could not have known her recipe call would coincide with this momentous and shocking event's announcement. "I don't feel like it" - and who can blame her.
I doubt anyone called in that day with information on the best time to trim young maple trees, despite the caller's question.
Generally should wait until the leaves fall off and the tree enters dormancy, if the guy who called in happens to be reading this.
I don't really want to use the words "my favorite" when talking about JFK coverage, because "favorite" implies that you enjoyed something, and news of a murder is NEVER enjoyable. But for me, it's this video, more than any other, that shows just how *normal* this Friday was for so many people, right before the world changed forever. You're talking about normal, "trivial" stuff like how to clean a tent, and then, wham.
Only the most stupid and/or wilfully ignorant people would infer from your comment that saying "favorite" was in the context of perverse entertainment. Sadly, President Kennedy's murder does form part of a ghoulish fascination for many, so much so that they have become inured to the horror depicted in the footage of his death.
@@NxDoyle It's not so ghoulish. It is an opportunity to hear history as it happened.
I agree and the KLIF radio broadcast is also haunting.
I once asked my brother if he liked JFK Assassination history and/or recordings and then realized what I'd said! He knew what I meant though.
9 days after my 10th birthday. Normal Friday at school until I got home, found out later that the principal at school decided it would be better if our parents told us.
I was 8; we were told about it while still in class and were sent home early.
I've heard about schools getting out early with the news. They announced the death just as our school let out for the day. Possibly the other schools in the area who let out at 3 p.m. were sent home early.
Great job putting all the info together into a coherent timeline. Fascinating and horrifying. Poor Mrs Kennedy had to be in complete shock, but she was very clear-headed the whole time. Pretty incredible.
Thanks for putting this together. I've never read so much detail about what happened in which minute that day. I hope with as many different radio stations that have been posted that someone will find & post audio from my 2 home area stations WGY in Schenectady & WSM in Nashville, or any station from those markets.
WDWS and WILL in Champaign-Urbana would be good to have as well.
I was in the 1st grade at Good Shepherd Catholic School in Manhattan, Nuns crying in the hallway, we were told the president was hurt. Went home early on a sunny Friday afternoon.
The quality of this recording is astounding.
The audio quality here is amazing for 1963. Was this a feed direct from the station's own recording system?
Incredible piece of history here. Thank you for the hard work you put into this!
"The president has just been shot. And now back to our German chocolate cake recipe".
The internet would make this show obsolete today. Amazing what 56 short years can change how we live and obtain info.
Very well done ! I have watched a few times and get chills every time .
If this were happening today , the radio station would switch to its national network and have non stop analysis and , early on , speculation
This is a fantastic piece of work. Thank you for taking the time and effort.
how come this still hurts so much you would think after 51 years the pain would go away,
matt adam i wasn't even born yet but it bothers me everyday....the country has never been the same....lots of hate and distrust for our government
@@pinehawk9600
👍👍👍
So very true...
Not ever. It was the first time I saw my dad cry. That weekend I realized Caroline and John Jr. would grow up without a daddy. I was seven. A punch in the gut.
Most detailed timeline of the sequence of events I've seen yet anywhere.
Great job! People were so civilized on WTIC in those days. Now it is so nasty on all the AM radio stations. Things sounded so much better in those days. I was only one and a half years old then, so I don't remember.
I'm sure much of America was that way back then. My mom grew up in that period.
There was more of a veneer of civility in those days...I'm not sure that people were fundamentally any different (better or worse) than they are today.
I couldn't help but think of what it would have been like to be home alone in the middle of the day and hearing this horrifying news. Hearing the easy listening music they played after the top of the hour seemed sort of eerie, especially as bulletins were announced over it.
Don't know if anyone else has done this in a comment, and if it's not allowed, you can take it down! But the news about the potential assassination comes in at a few seconds after the 26 minute mark. This is an absolutely great example of how a news event like that can change an absolutely ordinary day. I'm not in the eastern USA, I'm in another part of the country, and I was only a small child when President Kennedy was killed. But, the same thing certainly happened for September 11, 2001. Absolutely ordinary days, that became etched in our national conscience for the extraordinary and tragic events that transpired
I remember 9/11. It was a totally unremarkable day. We had just bought a new kitchen table and chairs on Sunday. On Monday we discovered we had some type of rodent in our house (it was a rat) which had gotten in due to a hole left by the HVAC repairman. Tuesday morning I went to work as usual. About 9 a.m. a co-worker casually asked me if I had any batteries. I didn't and asked her why. She wanted to power up a little television she had in her office because she'd heard a plane hit the World Trade Center. And suddenly it wasn't just another Tuesday morning.
The community feel of this station is very interesting and is clearly a lost art today . There is a very local horizontal exchange of ideas which is very mundane sounding but does work to build something we are missing in this nation:community.
Great job syncing the Dallas events in yellow overlay as the radio show continues. Wonderful job.
26:18 gives me chills every time I listen to it. Just so unbelievable sad how bad everything changes.....
The woman on the phone right after with a recipe was surreal.
These are wonderful recordings from a historical perspective,wonder how many radio and TV stations around the country handled the terrible news on air as it happened
It took a while for WTIC to learn of the shootings in Dallas
The Mantovani music only adds to the poignancy. The last gasps of an innocent time. I was born less than two years later, but still shed tears over the good things we’ve lost since.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we still lived in a world where the biggest topics of discussion for the every day person was garbage cans ,your dog ,and German chocolate cake?
That's the day the world changed forever.
Is it any wonder why we're all captivated and obsessed by it?
What is completely nuts about this video is how these people are just phoning into an unassuming radio show with their housekeeping tips, while the (I suppose) real-time updates are saying what's going on at that exact moment, and they're all completely unaware of it. At the moment you were discussing the best way to cook gravy, the last drops of life are being squeezed out of JFK, and you have no idea. I find that mind-blowing to think about.
FASCINATING VIDEO! Extremely well done, very entertaining and enlightening, thank you for putting this together!
Incredible notes added during this clip... What a timeline !
I don't think Oswald did it with help or alone. He denied both shootings and is on record as saying he did NOT even know he was a suspect on Kennedy until he heard it from the press. Even when Oswald was shot Johnson called during his surgery demanding a DEATH BED confession. Very strange indeed.
Excellent. Some of the lettering is a little hard to read, but otherwise, well done!
Well done, never heard the local coverage before, thanks!
55:39
dozens of witnesses who were mere feet away from this incident all stated the "shots came from the hill".
I think the witnesses who said it came from the grassy knoll and the witnesses who said it came from the school book building were both correct which is why shot number 2 and 3 happened within 1 or 2 seconds.
This is amazing. Thank you.
SUPERB "PLAY BY PLAY" AND IT ADDS TO THE URGENCY OF THE SCENE.
Thank you for sharing this broadcast. What might have been.....
From strictly a technical viewpoint its Amazing quality as well as production. With today's cell phones and zoom calls everything narrow and garbled sounding and cutting out half the time, its nice to hear how professional the olden days were. Our broadcast quality technology seems to have taken giant leaps backwards.
Excellent job with the timeline, especially as it relates to the events in Trauma Room 1. I never was aware that Kennedy actually died at 12:50pm, but that the time was fudged a bit so it could have been on record that he received the Last Rites before he died. Since it was able to offer his widow some small measure of comfort, completely understandable. 12:50pm or 1:00pm, what difference did it make? We’re only talking about the final cessation of autonomic body functions, anyway- everything that made the man JFK was gone at 12:30pm.
The man had no brain in his open skull at 12:31pm. The idea that the priests were reading last rites to a living person with no brain in his skull has always been ridiculous, but it makes for a great story for a Catholic whose corrupt family bought him the Presidency.
Wow, before Google we had these guys! Have fun to listen to. Obviously I'm just listening to the beginning of this, sadly knowing what is to come.
This is fascinating. I was "next door" in RI when this happened.
I am amazed that this is intact 50 years later...with high quality, too. Wikipedia says that this is one of only four known airchecks outside of Dallas/Fort Worth which are known to exist from that day. As for the first bulletin, it's at the 26:15 mark. (R.I.P. JFK 1917-1963) :'(
KML0224 What are the other three known airchecks? I would like to listen to those too, if I have not heard them before.
+katzrule34 There are air checks from WCCO of Minneapolis and WLW out on Cincinnati. WGN of Chicago has a brief air check also. Just search youtube for JFK assassination and there will be a number of air checks that come up.
Okay, I have listened to the WCCO one several times and the others as well. Hope that someday, others may surface, who knows?
I believe several airchecks exist of the 1:30-2:30 P M. EST outside of Dallas/Fort Worth: WTIC, WGN Chicago, KNX Los Angeles, and WCCO Minneapolis/St. Paul.
amazing job with this.
***** Not to be picky, just to help you catalog them, "allude" should be "elude" around 49:22.
Even so, fabulous job with this, Doug. I wish I could find much such well done timelines like this.
Philip Undisclosed As I alluded to the beautiful photo of me, I found myself eluding the vanity assassins! However, upon awakening, I found it all to be an illusion, that I was still butt-ugly...
@@PhilipJReed-db3zc
👍👍👍
Listening to this, I was surprised that WTIC Radio didn’t break into the show to air NBC Radio Hotline bulletins about the JFK assassination.
I still weep of this event so much promise the kennedy era❤ had
The pics in the background make it very hard to read the text!!
This station got almost everything right, very quickly.
I know that communications then were nowhere near as instantaneous as they are today, but I am a bit surprised at how long it took for these guys to report the bulletin. Mainly because if we follow the timeline offered here, all three television networks had already gone to air with the news, as well as UPI and AP. You would think that a caller might even have delivered the news to them.
As you may imagine, it was something they had to absolutely verify the report, before announcing it on the air. Management was stalling, waiting for a secondary source reporting it.
This event/ tragedy changed everything !!!
Brilliant. The narration and the photos of the broadcast subjects. Awesome.
Well done with the news as it happened that you put on the screen. I am amazed that a tape was rolling during the show. Did they make it a habit to tape those old local shows?
To prevent profanity from making it to air during a live audience participation show like "Mikeline," WTIC's engineers had implemented an analog tape delay system that recorded the studio output and then played that recorded audio to the transmitter several seconds later. (If some word or phrase needed to be cut, a push of a button would switch the transmitter feed to the live studio output and remain that way until it could be reset during the next available break.) That tape delay system is most likely the source of this recording.
Thanks for the compliment, Dave!
Note that the NBC Radio newscast at 2 P.M. EST did not have the usual sounder (a beep-beep-beep tone along with notes played by a kettle drum) that the network's hourly radio newscasts of the period usually had.
I never realized that radio shows like this existed! It was like social media of the olden days!
I note from many radio reports that doctors state JFK exhibited minor or shallow breathing and there was detected a faint heart beat. Are there any docs reading this who can state how this is possible after having so much of one's occipital-parietal blown away? Some state further that JFK was actually DOA before the limo drove under the triple underpass.
dude, no. dont start the conspiracy shit.
Just PART of the cover up.
I'm no doctor, but if I remember from anatomy class, heartbeat and breathing are essentially reflexive, partially controlled by the medulla oblongata, which is below the occipital lobe. I would guess that that area of the nervous system might have still been active for a while after the shooting. Nerves can still function for a little while if intact after losing consistent oxygen or blood supply, and the heart can self-stimulate itself to a point as well (this is why the heart still beats if it is removed). I hope that's accurate, I haven't done anatomy in a long time.
robert glenn i heard doc say his bottom jaw was moving up n down...struggling to breathe....probably reflex of some sort...must have been horrifying
Charlotte Gray Good comments..
On February 26, 2023, WTNH's Dennis house interviewed one of these announcers, Dick Bertel. Among the topics were the JFK and MLK assassinations. www.wtnh.com/on-air/thisweekinconnecticut/this-week-in-connecticut-broadcasting-legend-looks-back-on-biggest-moments-in-career/
Thank you for this well done rendition.
This was
Obviously a radio program serving a purpose that the internet takes care of nowadays. It is interesting to hear the reactions.
Wonderful time line break out. Thank you. Took some thoughtfulness to do this. GOOD/Wonderful job
One minute they're blathering on about chocolate cake recipes and how to clean a tent and the next, a history changing tragedy hits from completely out of the blue.
this is so very well done
I wonder what stations without network affiliation did. I assume they read wire copy (was a station required to have a wire or some news service at the time) but it would be interesting to hear what stations with meager resources did in the face of this tragedy.
Joe Postove Many stations, believe it or not, phoned random Dallas residents, and offered them money to tune into KLIF, etc, and run their audio through the phone for rebroadcast!
I worked in small market radio for a number of years, we had an Associated Press wire machine in a room adjacent to the control room. When a bulletin came in the AP machine would start dinging incessantly. A heads up announcer or newsman would immediately check the machine.
@@westvirginiadj7550 The 10 bells all hell was breaking loose as that was a “FLASH”(it was all capitalized) and meant something horrible had happened.
The NBC reports seemed to be much more polished than the stream of bulletins that were being read on other sources.
26:14 first news here
What's striking to me is how long it took word to get out. Even as of 2:18 Eastern, 48 minutes later, they're still reporting that the President is alive but critical.
That was the information they had at that time. The death of President Kennedy was not announced until 13:33(1:33 PM CT) or 14:33(2:33 PM CT) and then it took time to get the story on the wires
Also remember they were relaying everything by telephone. The lines were jammed and the connections were bad. Also, reputable news outlets did not report anyone's death until it had been confirmed by a unimpeachable source. Cronkite reports that Dan Rather and one of the priests said Kennedy was dead, but IT WAS NOT CONFIRMED. Until the official White House spokesman said Kennedy was dead, they would not say he was.
@@paulsonj72The JFK death was announced officially by Malcolm Kilduff, the acting press secretary who was on JFK's Texas trip, and CBS TV, along with NBC, ran with that. CBS radio had made the call earlier, based on the reporting of both Dan Rather and KRLD-TV's Eddy Barker, both of whom had sources in Parkland Hospital and within the Dallas Police. I think ABC (either radio or TV) announced the JFK death ahead of the Kilduff announcement.
It should be noted that WTIC's sister TV station, WTIC-3, was a CBS affiliate and ran "ATWT" when CBS' first bulletin broke. The channel's listings appeared in the New York City edition of TV Guide and was noteworthy as the nearest station outside of New York that aired Giants home games from Yankee Stadium that were blacked out in the Big Apple. The Giants hosted the then-St. Louis Cardinals the following Sunday, but CBS suspended NFL coverage along with all scheduled programming.
I had heard that some NFL games on November 24th, 1963 were locally broadcast on radio, but without commercial messages.
That's a fascinating note of the NFL blackout era. I remember that if the Eagles were playing the Giants in Philly (except for 1970 and 1972, when those were Monday Night Football games, on a school night), my father took us to see our grandmother, who lived in Waretown, NJ, a place that got the NYC TV stations as well as the Philly TV channels, and we saw those games on Channel 2, the CBS-TV outlet in the NYC area. I suspect that Giants fans living on Staten Island and in the Perth Amboy/New Brunswick areas turned their TV antennae to Channel 10 in Philadelphia, the CBS TV affiliate in the blackout days
Wow! Apparently, garbage bags were a brand new thing in 1963! It's just this sort of thing I love to hear in these historical broadcasts.
Before garbage bags you used your brown paper grocery bags to line your trash cans.
Brilliant job on this. I'm surprised this station was so far behind the curve.
They would not have known unless the teletype machine in the newsroom went off or until they got a bulletin from the network or unless a reporter called them. They announced it as quickly as NBC passed the news on--and they would have confirmed the news first. Responsible reporters did not pass on news in those days unless they had official confirmation. Note all the instances on this video where people said "the president is dead" (including Dan Rather) but the networks all said that it was NOT AN OFFICIAL announcement. Only when the White House announced it did the networks announce it as "official."