Friday, November 22, 2013

TV Specials Mark The 50th Anniversary

Nov. 22, 1963: At 1:48 p.m. (Eastern), CBS News interrupted the soap opera "As The World Turns" for Walter Cronkite to announce that President John F. Kennedy was seriously injured in a shooting in Dallas, Texas.



A whole crop of new TV specials have been created and aired pegged to this year's 50th anniversary of the assassination. The ones airing today include:
  •  Where Were You? (NBC, 9 p.m. ET) -- This special hosted by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw combines archival footage with first-person accounts of people who lived through it. It will include comments from former CBS anchor Dan Rather, who gave an interview to Brokaw about his experiences as a young CBS reporter in Dallas on the day of the assassination, including being the one to give CBS Radio the news that Kennedy was dead and being among the first to see the famous Zapruder film of the assassination days later. Because of Rather's fallout with CBS over a questionable 2004 story about President George W. Bush's National Guard service, he wasn't invited to participate in their coverage. He told AP, "I held off doing anything for anybody else for a while, thinking I may be asked to do something [for CBS]. I can't say I had any reason for that hope."
  • JFK Assassination: The Definite Guide (History Channel, 8 p.m. ET) -- Includes polling results of thousands of Americans to discover what they do and don't believe about the assassination and who was responsible. The network said it uncovered 311 different conspiracy theories in the process.
  • Lee Harvey Oswald: 48 Hours to Live (History Channel, 10 p.m. ET)
  • CBS News will stream its original news broadcasts minute-by-minute in real time today on CBSNews.com, just as they were originally delivered. The streaming will begin at 1:40 p.m. ET, the same time the first CBS breaking news bulletins went on the air, and will, of course, include the famous moment when Walter Cronkite announced the president was dead. The coverage of historic newscasts will continue through the weekend, following the four days from the assassination through Kennedy's funeral.

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