Even after Johnson was sworn in and back in D.C., no one was sure what was happening. In fact, the announcement of JFK’s death was delayed to let Johnson get on his way to the airport and Air Force One. No one knew if this was an isolated incident or if there was a plot to assassinate other government officials (both the president and vice president were in Dallas) rumors were flying. Nothing like this had ever happened in my lifetime. Kennedy was assassinated around noon on a Friday. He was conscious of his image as a young, sports-minded male, and people bought it. Kennedy had intervened with the National Guard in 1961 to allow Paul Hornung to play for the Green Bay Packers in the NFL title game. Kennedy actually played golf but refused to let that be filmed to draw a contrast with the Republicans. The Kennedy family played touch football on the lawn, sailed on Nantucket Sound and went on lengthy hikes. Eisenhower played golf, Truman walked and Roosevelt was limited by his paralysis due to polio. JFK also was the first “sports” president anyone of my generation knew. He was young, he was funny and he had a beautiful wife. JFK was, for my generation, the first president who didn’t look like he could be my father. It took some time for the national coverage to begin, but when it did begin, it went commercial-free for four days, the first time that had happened. In fact, the networks were not even on the air - stations were carrying their own local programming. But NBC and CBS were not carrying the coverage. Parts of JFK’s visit to Dallas were being covered locally only because the local stations decided to pool their resources. Why is all this important? The coverage and dissemination of news was slow (although the facts probably were more accurate) and this made the decision-making process slow as well. And if you called someone and they were not there, there were no answering machines - you had to keep calling until someone answered. If you were in the field and wanted to make a call, you had to find a pay phone or talk someone into letting you use a private phone. The news sat on the machine until someone went to read it. Most news was distributed by two wire services - AP and UPI - on machines that printed 60 words per minute. To transmit news from anywhere, you had to order - well in advance - physical lines from AT&T. The only videotape machines were massive items, and tape had to be physically edited, a cumbersome process. Sound film cameras were big - think about carrying around a couple of cement blocks - and could record a maximum of 12 minutes before changing the film was required. News was shot on film, meaning it had to be physically transported to the television station, developed and edited before it could air - a process that took a minimum of one hour and could take several.
Everything was in black and white, and if you wanted to change the channel, you had to get out of your chair and turn a knob on the set. Television news primarily consisted of two programs - the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC and the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Radio was the primary source for breaking news for most people, and newspapers still had huge circulations. I had just started working as a radio newswriter in Minneapolis. 24, 1963, you must understand how different news and television were 50 years ago. To understand how difficult it was to make the decision about whether or not to play NFL games on Nov.