Stations plan extensive coverage
NEW YORK — On the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, the turgid melodrama of “As the World Turns” was suddenly interrupted by grave news from the real world. In Dallas, three shots had been fired at President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade. Fifty-eight minutes later, a visibly moved Walter Cronkite would confirm the unthinkable: The president was dead.
For the ensuing three days, Americans gathered around their televisions in a rite of collective mourning as the three broadcast networks abandoned their regularly scheduled programming to provide uninterrupted news coverage. From Nov. 22 through 25, 1963, 96 percent of TV-owning households tuned in for an average of more than 31 hours apiece, and a record-setting 41.5-million television sets were in use during the president’s funeral Monday afternoon.
This type of blanket coverage was unprecedented at the time — CBS had become the first network to expand to a 30-minute news broadcast just two months earlier — and would be replicated only after the Sept. 11 attacks 38 years later.
Television eventually returned to normal, of course, even if the popular imagination never completely did. Five decades after his death, Kennedy remains a fixture on the small screen, providing dramatic inspiration for shows such as “Mad Men” and fodder for hundreds of made-for-TV movies and documentaries.
Fittingly, the 50th anniversary of the assassination will be commemorated by the medium it helped define, because a veritable avalanche of JFK-related programming is scheduled to hit the airwaves in the coming weeks. CBS, NBC and PBS have prime-time specials in the works, as do the cable news outlets and a host of other channels, including History, Discovery, National Geographic and Discovery.
Whether because of lingering questions about the assassination, the perception that JFK’s death marked the end of postwar optimism and the beginning of the ’60s, or the simple power of the Kennedy mystique, television cannot seem to get enough of the so-called Camelot era.
“The four days remain imprinted in our minds, as do the significant moments that you see and re-see. Even if you were not alive in November ’63, certainly you’ve experienced the television moments of it and are still grappling with what it means,” said Ron Simon, curator of the Paley Center for Media in New York.
It seems there’s a flavor of Kennedy coverage for every palate, from “Letters to Jackie” on TLC for first-lady fanatics to “JFK: The Smoking Gun,” for the more conspiracy-minded, on Reelz. If television provided a way to collectively mourn Kennedy’s death in 1963, today’s cacophonous medium inevitably offers us dozens of ways to remember.
The retrospective began at last month’s Emmy Awards, where Don Cheadle described the assassination as “the moment when the television generation came of age,” then introduced “American Idol” star Carrie Underwood, who performed the 1965 Beatles hit “Yesterday.”
The awkward tribute illustrated the difficulty of revisiting this chapter in American history in a way that feels fresh, appropriate and relevant, particularly for a younger generation.
One time-honored approach is to involve big-name celebrities, however indirectly. CNN has “The Sixties: The Assassination of President Kennedy,” the first installment of a 10-part documentary series produced by Tom Hanks, who will also appear, along with Steven Spielberg, in NBC’s “Tom Brokaw Special: Where Were You?”
Hanks notwithstanding, the JFK project with the most name recognition may be “Killing Kennedy,” premiering Nov. 10 on National Geographic Channel and adapted from the nonfiction best-seller by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard.
The film, starring Rob Lowe as the ill-fated president and Ginnifer Goodwin as the long-suffering first lady, hopscotches through the major events of Kennedy’s abbreviated term in the White House in between scenes of his womanizing. More illuminating, at least to the average viewer, will be the film’s depiction of Lee Harvey Oswald (Will Rothhaar), especially his alleged attempt to assassinate the far-right-wing zealot Gen. Edwin Walker and his tragically close brushes with the FBI.
