Wednesday, August 10, 2016

First Beatles news coverage on U.S. TV?

Before "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was first played on American radio on December 17, 1963, there had been a pair of TV news reports about the Beatles' success that year in Britain.

The first seems to have been on NBC-TV's Huntley-Brinkley evening news program of Monday, November 18, 1963. The video of Edwin Newman's report has been lost, but this YouTube selection has the audio:



The first television report for which actual video is still in existence came from a CBS-TV morning news program on Friday, November 23. The reporter is Alexander Kendrick:



These TV reports were spurred by U.S. newspaper and magazine articles, according to "What You Don't Know About The Beatles' U.S. Debut". Here's more:

On November 4, at the outset of another marathon British tour, the Beatles were the main attraction at a Royal Command Performance in London. With the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret looking on, John Lennon famously asked for the crowd’s help: “The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands, and the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” (He’d actually threatened to say, “rattle your f**king jewelry,” but thought better of it.) With that, the band launched into their closing number, a blistering version of "Twist and Shout." The next day, British newspapers were beside themselves. The show was broadcast in Britain on November 10, bringing the Beatles to yet another enormous television audience.

American journalists picked up the story. “Thousands of Britons ‘Riot’ – Liverpool Sound Stirs up Frenzy,” headlined the Washington Post. Time magazine described Beatlemania in vivid detail in an article headlined “The New Madness.” That same week, NBC, CBS and ABC dispatched crews to cover the Beatles performing at the Winter Gardens Theater in Bournemouth. The date was Saturday, November 16 ...

That in-Britain coverage by the U.S. TV networks resulted in the NBC News report on November 18 and the CBS report on November 23. (ABC apparently never aired its report.) Then, this:

CBS’s plans to air a story that evening [of November 23] were scrapped after the assassination of President Kennedy that afternoon.


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