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July 23, 1962…First World Wide Television Broadcast Via Telstar

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Eyes Of A Generation.com


July 23, 1962…First World Wide Television Broadcast Via Telstar

On Monday afternoon on this date, 52 years ago, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite entered NBC’s studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza to co-host this historic broadcast with NBC’s Chet Huntley. ABC’s Howard K. Smith was at the UN Building. The twenty minute broadcast from the US to Europe was slated to start at 3 PM eastern, but the Telstar signal was acquired a few minutes early so they started then.

Aside from the historic transmission event, the sight of Cronkite and Hunley working together is nothing less than extraordinary and you will love the sign off at 40:23 which made everyone laugh!

Just after that, NBC Newsman Merrell Muller takes over and implies that only NBC carried the US to Europe program live here in the US.
A few hours later, all three networks did carry the Europe to US portion live with the hosts at NBC, but after seeing how well this went, I’ll bet CBS and ABC were sorry they opted out of this segment.

This is the only version of the entire US portion of the broadcast I can find and is queued to the start of the network coverage. As you will see, there are shots fed into NBC from all across the country including Cubs baseball from Chicago, President Kennedy in Washington, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Mt. Rushmore, the Statue Of Liberty, buffalos on the planes, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir from Utah and much more.

In Europe and Canada, 100 million viewers tuned in and it seems that the baseball game was their favorite part. A few hours later, the tables would turn and Europe would broadcast live to the US with Howard K. Smith joining Cronkite and Huntley at NBC and all three networks would air this live, simultaneously.

There is more on this event in the very good story at the link below. Enjoy and Share!

http://www.history.com/news/the-birth-of-satellite-tv-50-years-ago

http://youtu.be/0IX7vC4Ts_A?t=9m58sWith behind the scenes stories from Bill Turner

Source

8 responses to “July 23, 1962…First World Wide Television Broadcast Via Telstar”

  1. Leon Zetekoff

    Hi Dennis. I didn’t know that. Right I know how satellite stuff is done now wasn’t aware that they had that then. I guess it makes sense since our amateur radio satellites work same way constantly moving. Thanks for uodate

  2. Leon Zetekoff

    The comment that the US folks were watching the US feed off the satellite is wrong. I believe from my memory telstar had one tv channel and there was one earth station in Andover. So if there were any out of sync pix that was due to incoming feeds not synced up to the house not from the satellite doing it. The satellite is just a repeater garbage on garbage out. Lron

  3. Alan Maretsky

    16 years ago, I stepped into my first satellite truck. We were still transmitting analog carriers and just starting with digital carriers. It has come so far since I started and even further than the launch of the first Telstar bird. Now, accessing a satellite normally takes around 2-3 minutes and you’re good to go. I sat and watched this entire video in awe of what it represented.

  4. Dennis Degan

    I remember this event. Well, I remember its happening. I’ve forgotten the details. Thanks for bringing it back for me. I remember only slightly better the Europe-to-US part with Eves Montand singing from France.

  5. John Schipp

    Cue the buffalo herd!

  6. Gary Walters

    I watched until the very end, and saw that Merill Mueller anchoring the NBC News Special Report from the same studio used when JFK was shot. Also, one of the few times a Gulf Oil ‘Instant Special’ was not anchored by Frank McGee.

  7. Dan Wolfe

    This is all kinds of awesome! Really fun and fascinating look into broadcast technolgoy, American culture and cooperation in 1962.

  8. Bruce Burgoyne

    Given the monumental technical achievement this show represented, I’m amazed it went off so well! I didn’t see it at the time, but my own broadcast career began five years later. It was with CHSJ-TV in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. This was a privately owned station which pioneered television service in my home province in the 1950s. It operated as an affiliate of the CBC, and the program schedule was a mix of our local plus CBC content. The sync-flip was an ever-present fact of life as we joined or broke away from CBC content. A frame-sync wasn’t ever added in our Master Control, but seeing the flips happen repeatedly in this Telstar Broadcast fondly reminded me of my days in broadcasting!

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