There is an audio recording but no film. There wasn’t any such thing as live video transmission back then. Even for an event across town. Hence the catch phrase, “Film at 11!”
Pretty hard to imagine/remember for us today when you can Facetime someone on the other side of the world on your phone.
Technology has moved insanely fast in the last 80-ish years.
I recall the first live trans oceanic broadcast on Telstar. Some guy in France sang I don;t remember what. It was a big deal. In 1953 broadcasters raced each other from England to be the first with film of the coronation of QEII
I’m confused by what you mean. I agree that cameras weren’t there to record LBJ take his oath, but Oswald was shot on live television.
You got me there. I saw that myself on TV. Maybe I meant that it just wasn’t common or routine. Obviously, JFK’s funeral was broadcast all over the country.
I think it’s fair to say that JFK’s murder changed what was common or routine. Cameras were broadcasting live from the police station in the days after the shooting, with reporters shouting questions at Oswald whenever he was within earshot.
This might have been the first time that there was this sort of news spectacle, where reporters were on air without anything to say, other than offering a general sense of the mood in the room.
While the nation was paying rapt attention, eager for information, some tv executives surely were realizing the lucrative potential for such a national story; they’ve been eager to replicate it ever since.
Well, there was, but it would have been nearly impossible to drag a video camera onto the plane, because it would have weighed a ton and required a cable to connect to a remote unit the size of a city bus.
Even a shoulder-mounted 16mm film camera would have been awkward to move around with in a C-135. And Sid Davis, the one radio reporter who witnessed the swearing in, couldn’t even get a phone on Air Force One to send the sound back to his network (Davis did manage to file the first pool report for broadcast, but it was a recap.)
I was in the eighth grade at lunch break. The principal announced it. In my class right after that, the teacher did not say a word about it.
Yeah. The limitations were mostly technological, not institutional.
There may have been a certain failure of imagination, in that newsgathering in those days used pro equipment. If the bulky high quality gear they had didn’t fit in the venue they did without.
Nowadays of course most unexpected news is broken to the world via shaky phonecam vids with the action slipping in and out of the frame.
Back on 11/22/63, had somebody among the media brought an 8mm home movie camera aboard AF1, that low quality shaky silent footage of LBJ taking the oath would be historic.
I was five years old, riding in the back seat of Dad’s red VW Bug while my family drove up to visit the college my older sister would be attending the next semester. Classic New Jersey road trip — which meant, of course, a diner stop.
Our waitress, a large woman with eyebrows drawn so high they were practically in low-Earth orbit, came to the table in tears. As she set down the menus, she choked out, “President Kennedy was shot.”
The whole place fell silent. Even at five, I could feel the air change.
Looking back, it really did feel like the country’s mood shifted on a dime. Before the assassination, America still had that Camelot glow — politics aside, there was a sense of optimism, maybe even a little innocence. Afterward, the tone hardened. It was a national before-and-after moment, the kind of psychic jolt you don’t forget… not unlike 9/11.