Oct 5, 2018 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 7 min read

Just sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale.

It was slightly more than a three-decade tour, the progression of television from its infancy to the all-encompassing American phenomenon it had become by the dawn of the 1960s.

The weather started getting rough by 1961, with Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow lambasting it in the speech that secured his place in the history books:

“Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”

Of course, such observations hardly dissuaded the likes of Robin Jordan, who grew up in the ’60s with said eyes glued to said set.

And, as Maxwell Smart would say, loving it.

She recently presented “Remembering Television in the ’60s” at Peters Township Public Library, bringing a program she developed for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes to an enthusiastic crowd of folks who, indeed, remember.

Some of them may recall watching Guy Lombardo in Times Square as his Royal Canadians played “Auld Lang Syne” to ring in 1960, amid a seismic shift in who was making programming decisions on behalf of the American public.

“In the ’50s, sponsors were buying the time and putting on their shows,” Jordan explained, but that practice was riding off into the sunset. “Networks took control from sponsors of what they were going to show. They would sell time to the sponsors, but networks were choosing the programs.”

And so quality was losing at to quantity, at least in terms of ratings and the correlating boost to networks’ financial positions, which was the Real McCoy of the motivating factor:

“Stock prices drove executive pay.”

The scathing observations of Minow – by the way, he turned 92 in January – aside, television occasionally offered material beyond “formula comedies about totally unbelievable families” and the like.

On Sept. 26, 1960, U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon squared off in the first televised debate featuring major-party presidential candidates.

“If you listened on the radio, you thought Nixon won. However, TV viewers gave it to Kennedy,” Jordan said. “It was mainly because Kennedy had planned for television. He wore makeup. He had investigated the studio’s setup. He wore a contrasting-color suit, so he stood out from the background.”

In November, Kennedy ended up winning the popular vote by 112,827, a margin of a minuscule 0.17 percent. Draw your own conclusions.

Of course, such serious fare didn’t stop the sitcoms, and one of history’s most successful – and initially, most derided – debuted on CBS for the 1962-63 season.

Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named Jed.

“This show ranked among the top 20 most-watched programs on television for eight of its nine seasons,” reported about the phenomenon that was “The Beverly Hillbillies.” “Twice it was No. 1, and a number of episodes remain among the most-watched television episodes of all time.”

Meanwhile, fans of Westerns continued to support their favorite genre heavily, as shows like “Bonanza” reaped ratings – please pardon the expression – bonanzas.

“After the fourth season, the Cartwrights and nearly every other recurring character on the show wore the same clothes,” Jordan observed about the NBC hit, which ended up running for 14 seasons. “They actually reused the scenes where they were riding their horses, so it was very important that they had the same clothes on.”

We interrupt this program.

CBS had just started airing its Nov. 22, 1963, episode of “As the World Turns” when a special report interrupted: President Kennedy had been shot and seriously wounded in Dallas, Texas. The soap opera resumed, but it wasn’t long before Walter Cronkite delivered the news that Lyndon Johnson presumably would be taking his oath of office as the 36th U.S. president.

The major networks proceeded to air four consecutive days of nonstop coverage of the aftermath, costing themselves an estimated $40 million. Minow chimed in again, this time on a much more positive note:

“Only through television could the country grasp the tragedy. We always hear that television is a young medium. If so, it grew up in a couple of days.”

• Ten weeks later, an estimated 73 million viewers tuned in to “The Ed Sullivan Show” to watch four long-haired-for-the-time musicians from Liverpool, England. The Beatles’ debut and second appearance with Ed marked the highest-rated regularly scheduled episodes of TV programs until “MASH” finally wrapped up after running four times as long as the actual Korean War.

Congress’ Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964 provided carte blanche for the Vietnam War, the first with news and images brought directly into the American living room in practically real time. Early perceptions of a winning effort in southeastern Asia eventually were negated by coverage of the Tet Offensive in early 1968, which historians cite as a major turning point in relative support for the war effort.

Television had its own turning points in the interim, especially with regard to the number of shows broadcast in black-and-white. By the start of the 1965-66 season, most were in color – Barbara Eden and her perpetually covered navel in “I Dream of Jeannie” was one of the few exceptions – even though only 6 percent of Americans owned color sets.

“That was the time when, if you knew somebody who had a color TV on New Year’s Day, you’d go to their house,” Jordan recalled.

You bet your bippy.

The content of TV programming was changing, too, in response to the some of the trends of the late ’60s. For example, NBC’s “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” was the top-rated show during its debut season, 1968-69, while featuring some wisecracks that still might raise eyebrows today.

Ruth Buzzi: “I tried to join the sexual revolution, but I flunked the physical.”

Cher: “Sonny and I are perfectly compatible. As soon as there’s a problem, my psychiatrist contacts his psychiatrist, and they work it out.”

Judy Carne: “All the kids in my school are really proud of the astronauts. Imagine to stay that high for that long.”

And of course, Nixon while again seeking the nation’s highest office:

“Sock it to me?”

Perhaps because he looked better on television than Hubert Humphrey, Richard E., as Archie Bunker later would call him, was president for perhaps the biggest broadcast of ’em all.

One small step for a man …

History records Neil Armstrong’s statement shortly after he stepped on the surface of the moon a bit differently, as he apparently neglected to say, “a.” But the “one giant leap for mankind” seems to have been in the script all along.

Whatever the case, shortly before 11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on July 20, 1969, some half a billion people – remember, that was almost half a century ago – tuned in to watch that step and/or leap, some of us watching the flickering images on black-and-white sets in our parents’ bedrooms as a special staying-up-late treat.

Well, now it’s time to say goodbye to Jed and all his kin.

Cue the test pattern.