Sometimes, especially if you're in or adjacent to our business, it's easy to forget that

social media, Sturm, and Drong is a very recent consequence of rather new media.

In fact, it was only until after the passage of the 1984 cable act that cable began to

have any kind of impact.

Until then, for most of us screen watchers, it was just the big three networks and maybe

a couple of syndicated channels, reception was variable and going live was complicated,

costly, and rare.

Nevertheless, after Friday, November 22, 1963, live coverage was required no matter the

cost, whenever a president left the White House.

We first aired this piece one of our favorites in 2003. In it, WNYC's Sarah Fischko recollects

those dreadful days in November when everyone was paralyzed in front of our TV screens.

Ladies and gentlemen, conductor Eric Linesdorf, symphony hall, Boston, November 22, 1963.

We have a press report over the wires that the president of the United States has been

the victim of an assassination.

If you were alive and over say five years old in November 1963, wherever you were, you

remember it.

We will play the funeral march from Beethoven's Third Symphony.

The nation heard the news over wire services, radio, by word of mouth, public announcement,

and most dramatically on television.

Television took over our lives for what are sometimes called those four dark days in Dallas,

the Friday of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Saturday, Sunday, and

Monday that followed.

...