CNN and the 24-hour news revolution

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2020

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In June 1980, US media mogul Ted Turner launched the first TV station dedicated to 24 hour news, Cable News Network or CNN. We get a first-hand account of the early days of a channel that transformed news and politics. Plus, the end of Lebanon's civil war, the long fight for full voting rights for African-Americans and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's plan to become a film mogul.

(PHOTO: Ted Turner attends official CNN Launch event at CNN Techwood Drive World Headquarters in Atlanta Georgia, June 01, 1980 (Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson
0:10.3	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:13.0	Coming up, how civil rights campaigners fought to secure full voting rights for black Americans.
0:18.0	You can turn your back now and you can keep the club in your hand, but you cannot beat down justice.
0:24.4	And we will register to vote because as citizens of these United States,
0:27.8	we have the right to do it.
0:29.1	Plus the end of the civil war in Lebanon in 1990.
0:32.6	People were hugging each other, trucks with food and provisions and fruit
0:38.0	which wasn't available in East Beirut, started coming in.
0:42.0	Also how the Soviet Union targeted nomads in Central Asia
0:46.0	and how the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein tried to make a hit film.
0:50.0	Saddam Hussein was very enthusiastic about encouraging Iraq to become, if you will,
0:58.8	Bollywood-on Tigris. That's all coming up later in the podcast. But we begin with a landmark moment for
1:05.2	broadcasting. These days there are any number of 24-hour news channels beaming TV
1:10.5	pictures into the homes of billions of people around the world in scores of languages.
1:15.1	It's all news and it's all live and it's all day.
1:18.2	But it wasn't always that way.
1:20.2	And we're going back to 1980 for the launch of the first 24-hour TV news channel
1:24.9	CNN as Rebecca Kessby has been finding out some say it changed journalism and politics forever.
1:34.0	We hope that the cable news network with its international coverage and greater
1:40.0	depth coverage will bring both in the country and in the world a better
1:44.1	understanding of how people from different nations live and work together.
	...

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