Tag: TV history

Boomers Witnessed The First Televised Presidential Debate

As we often say here at misterboomer.com, the Boomer Generation years were historic ones not only for boomers, but for the entire world. This week we will elect a president, and the recent televised debates may play a role in the election of that president. Yet many boomers will recall that the very first televised presidential debate aired in the days of our youth.

It was 1960. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was finishing his second term, and his Vice President, Richard Nixon, was the Republican candidate put forward to take his place. The Cold War was getting colder by the day and, adding to the chill, the Soviets achieved the first victories in the Space Race. Change was in the air with many social issues, as the American public was looking at civil rights, the future of Social Security and, fresh off a multi-year military engagement in Korea, the possibility loomed large for U.S. involvement in a little-known land called Vietnam. In short, the country was looking for a strong leader to navigate the changing times.

The Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy, the then one-term U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, as their candidate. It was a long and bitterly fought campaign, and heading into September, Nixon held a slight lead in national polls. The two parties agreed on four televised debates, the first of which aired on September 26, 1960.

It is estimated that 88% of U.S. households had televisions in 1960, and more than 70 million tuned in to the debate. By all accounts, the 43-year old Senator looked tanned and confident in front of the TV cameras. By contrast, Nixon appeared pale and sweaty. He had recently experienced a hospital stay after injuring his knee on a campaign stop in North Carolina. After losing 20 pounds, he looked sickly and frail. To make his appearance matters worse, Nixon chose to wear a light gray suit which helped him to blend into the debate stage’s background on black & white TV, while Kennedy’s dark suit offered a higher contrast against the neutral backdrop. Both candidates had refused makeup, but under the hot television lights, Nixon began to sweat profusely. As the debate continued, beads of sweat were visible in the TV close-ups.

Mister Boomer remembers watching that debate with his family. As usual for boomers, there was one black & white TV permanently stationed in the living room, so TV viewing was always a family affair. He remembers writing in a school journal that week how the sweat beaded up on Nixon’s upper lip. Being a decade away from voting age, Mister B was hardly up on the issues of the day, but he knew what he saw: Kennedy answered forcefully and directly into the camera, while Nixon fumbled his speech and his eyes strayed left and right. Some say Nixon’s side glances and appearance are what gave him the nickname, “Tricky Dick,” which came back to haunt him years later during Vietnam protests while he was president.

Before 1960 television was mainly thought of as an entertainment medium. The late 1950s brought about the concept that television could be used as an educational medium for children and now, with national candidates debating on live TV, it was becoming a place for serious political discourse.

While the November election saw Kennedy win by only a slight popular vote of less than one percent, he had a substantial Electoral College victory. A week later, Kennedy himself said it was the TV that helped him “turn the tide.” Some historians say it was the success of the debate that gave President Kennedy the confidence to reject the advice of his Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban missile crisis in October of 1962. They had recommended military action against the Soviets. Instead, Kennedy took to the airwaves to plead his case to the world, and set up the now-famous naval “quarantine” that led to a mutually satisfactory diplomatic solution.

The prospect of facing the cameras was so daunting for Lyndon Johnson that he refused to participate in televised debates with Barry Goldwater in 1964. Nixon, the Republican nominee in 1968 and 1972, was still stinging from his first TV debate appearance and followed Johnson’s lead in refusing to accept the TV invitation. Consequently, the next televised debates would not appear until 1976, when President Gerald Ford agreed to debate Governor Jimmy Carter. Televised debates have been a part of every presidential campaign since.

Before the historic Kennedy-Nixon debate, most Americans only saw their candidates in photos and read about them in newspapers and magazines. These first televised debates changed that forever. Even though Nixon was said to recover from his first appearance in subsequent debates, in 1960 the damage had been done with the American public. From that point on, how a candidate looked, sounded and behaved on TV played an important role in the election of our presidents… and we boomers had a front-row seat.

What do you remember about the Kennedy-Nixon debates, boomers?

Note: This post was originally published by Mister Boomer on November 4, 2012.

Boomers (Mostly) Had One TV

The Boomer Generation is synonymous with the TV Generation. Television came into its own after the war, and boomers had a front row seat to its evolution. Throughout the boomer era and into the early 2000s, the sales of television sets continued to climb higher every year. A good part of those sales in the past three decades can be attributed to the purchase of additional TV sets for a single home. However, since the early 2010s, the reverse is true; less TVs are being sold compared to each previous year. The reason is obvious as streaming on other devices grabs a younger generation. Many younger people look at TV in the same way they might a cassette tape.

Let’s recap our shared TV history and see how we got here. Television has been around in practical terms since the mid-1930s, but the number of homes owning a TV was relatively small. In fact, by 1945, only 10,000 TV sets were purchased for home use in the United States. Yet, at the dawn of the Boomer Generation, things were about to change.

Development on TV technology was delayed during the war years as materials and factories were dedicated to the war effort. Now, after the war, it was full steam ahead for innovation and especially, manufacturing capabilities. These advancements helped greatly in selling TVs in a number of ways, perhaps the most important being a dramatic drop in price. A TV could cost upward of $500 before 1949, which was equivalent to a month or more salary for the average worker. In one year alone — between 1949 and 1950 — the price of a TV was cut by half or more. As a result, by 1950, nine percent of U.S. households owned a television. Ten years later, in 1960, that number jumped to 90 percent.

Westinghouse TV commercial, 1956:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6hnpF6wjNU

Still, Mister Boomer wondered about the phenomena of families owning more than one TV. Mister B did not know anyone who had more than one. As such, TV watching was a family affair, much as radio listening was in the previous decades. In Mister B’s research, he discovered that some households did begin to own more than one TV as far back as the 1950s. From Mister Boomer’s point of view, these households probably had not only a higher income level, but houses that could accommodate an extra TV.

In Mister B’s estimation, there would be only two practical places for a second TV: a family room or a basement rec room. Mister Boomer only knew one person who had both a living room and a family room, and in that family’s case, their one TV was in the family room. Mister B did know several people who had finished basements, but in that era, most were described as rec rooms. They were intended for recreation, so they might have a ping pong table or all-purpose folding table where jigsaw puzzles could be assembled, card or board games played, and the like. No one Mister B knew had a TV in their basement. Boomers will recall that TV reception in a lower level was also a challenge. An extra antenna wire would be necessary to run outside the house to the antenna on the roof, and even then, rabbit ears on top of the TV set with molded wads of aluminum foil attached would certainly be a possibility.

What about the bedroom, you say? The idea that a bedroom is a sanctuary, a place to relax and unwind, is a relatively new one. In the boomer era, bedrooms were for sleeping. Boomers themselves often had desks to do homework in their rooms, however, Mister Boomer knew no one who had a second TV in their bedroom.

There is another consideration about bedrooms and second TVs that relates entirely to the evolution of TV and the Boomer Generation, and that is, late night TV. The Tonight Show first aired in 1952, initially with Steve Allen, then with Jack Paar as hosts. This may have contributed to the eight percent of U.S. households owning a second TV by 1959. Johnny Carson took over hosting duties in 1962, and by the mid-60s, color TVs began replacing black-and-white models. Johnny Carson joked about being in people’s bedrooms, so there was probably a correlation to late night TV that may have influenced buying habits.

In Mister Boomer’s experience, it was the early 1970s before he heard of anyone having more than one TV. Today it is reported that the average American household has four TVs. That number continues to drop as younger people, unaccustomed to TV viewing in the same manner boomers did, start families of their own.

How about you, boomers? When did your family first get a second TV? Did you ever have a TV in your own room before attending college?