THUNDER BAY – It was a day that changed the world. A moment for many, frozen in time. On November 22nd 1963, as he was riding in a motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas Texas, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assasinated. People around the world, as they heard the news from Dallas, have long remembered where they were at that critical moment in history. It was a time when there was a shift in media coverage as well. It was in effect the first time that television news overtook the print media. People tuned in, over that fateful weekend to watch the news from Dallas, then later watch the events from Washington, and the shooting of assassination suspect Lee Harvey Oswald.
The television news coverage in 1963 was not the same as it is today with twenty-four hour news channels. In fact with the television cameras of the day, it took time for them to warm up enough to be used to get pictures on air.
Here is the reporting as CBS News reported the events of November 22, 1963:
Within the hour, CBS was on the air with news anchor Walter Cronkite:
The change that weekend in how news was covered, was a major shift in how people accessed their news. There was none of the live video from the scene in Dallas, or at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, in those days, the cameras were large, and not all that portable.
However that weekend the news cameras brought the United States and Canada together with coverage of the funeral from Washington.