YES, because it is very early in the morning and the TODAY Show is starting and that makes for a very rare image! These four very familiar NBC talents work at different “ends of each day”, yet here they sit beneath the glow of studio lights: (l-r) Chet Huntley, Dave Garroway, Frank Blair, and David Brinkley. It is election night and NBC’s correspondents across America have been covering the event all night, nonstop since the polls closed— the kind of night when American television news grows taller, louder, and more certain of its purpose.
Before the anchor desk in Studio 8H, the cameras loom — RCA TK‑10s, marked with the classic NBC “snake” logo. Even for those who lived through the era, seeing that on monochrome cameras still feels slightly out of place.
The photo comes to us courtesy of Ken Johannessen, and like so many images from early broadcast news, it opens a window into a moment when television was still defining itself — still discovering how to cover a nation choosing its next president.
To see the video from which this image came, take a look at this clip from that night, cued to exactly the right spot.
OH, AND BY THE WAY…Something small but interesting that jumped out at me were the two Nifty notebooks resting on the desk. A tiny detail, but a perfect artifact of the era — the kind of everyday object that instantly transports you back to the early 1960s. Their two‑hole paper, the click‑shut top, the slot for a pencil. I started a grammar school year with one…did you?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.