Asssassination of JFK - 50 years on

For anyone that missed 'JFK - News of a Shooting' on More 4 last night I would recommend watching a repeat or catching it online. It was a fascinating look at news gathering in the early 1960's and the limitations that impacted upon the reporting of the assassination. In particular the story of how it took 20 minutes for a television camera to warm up and that's why Walter Cronkite appeared in sound only for the first 20 minutes.

The programme led me to think about the failure of the BBC to show any archive programming on either BBC TWO or FOUR. The famous TWTWTW tribute still exists in the archive, as does Richard Dimbleby's commentary of the funeral. The 90 minute broadcast of the funeral was the longest transatlantic satellite broadcast at that time and lasted 90 minutes, the maximum time permitted in those days. BBC Parliament have created special evenings of programming around less archival footage.

That story was heavily featured on Newsflash too.

It would be interesting to know how this was covered in the UK at the time so this might be worth a look. Was news pretty much confined to news bulletins back then, apart from maybe a newsflash to report it initially? Obviously the following day the BBC launched Doctor Who so the schedule wasn't ripped up completely.

The story was broke during 'Tonight' with Cliff Michelmore receiving a phone call on air. A few minutes later there was a news flash that Kennedy was dead and the BBC played the Star-Spangled Banner! Of course the story was broke by Granada television with viewers in the North West hearing first. The rest of ITV had their local news earlier do only Granada broke the story initially.

Heres a link to how the story was covered in the UK:

http://www.transdiffusion.org/tv/halcyondays/1960s/camelot

Some reference was made to UK media coverage on the Excellent real time Radio Two documentary last night, which said all that was needed to be said. Any documentary would have no doubt gone down the conspiracy theories or a retrospect of the Kennedy presidency to cover up the lack of video archive. Even in the US the major initial coverage was Radio based. There's no video of LBJ's inauguration for example.

Well CBS are replaying the entire 70 hours of coverage on their website. The length of the continuous coverage was so long that it wasn't surpassed until 9/11.

Deleted (duplicated post due to glitch !)

Interesting. My parents have always said the BBC were seen by many to be rather
crass, by showing Harry Worth that evening, the sentiments were that ITV 'did the right thing'
by closing down as a mark of respect.

Fascinating account - ITV regions closing down for the night as they didn't quite know what to do and BBC just showing the globe.

JFK: News of a Shooting is repeated tonight on More4 at 10.55pm.

Reading that Transdifussion article - the fact that the BBC newsreader stated the President was dead before bowing his head and fading out comes across as very dramatic indeed. A shame it doesn't exist in archive.

The BBC globe playing out for half an hour - must have felt like an eternity.

The first part of this 1993 documentary has information on how UK television covered the assassination:

Probably not as much as you might imagine, the 60s and 70s were full of
hours and hours worth of the test card during the day, so to have 30 mins worth
of a caption, in silence, wouldn't have been that alien.

I understand but in the middle of programming and after the very brief announcement of the death of a President (especially during the Cold War era), surely it would have been at least a bit of a concern?