What major international news event was fully covered blow by blow on all 3 major networks in the USA on June 2nd 1953?

gtho4

THE GREAT CORONATION WAR In the infancy of television (but not of American royalty-worship) the networks fought their first all-out battle for supremacy over who would get to show Queen Elizabeth II being crowned When American television was very young, but American royalty-worship was not, the biggest, loudest, most pointless battle for supremacy among the networks was over which would be first-by mere minutes, if necessary-to show pictures of the coronation of the British queen. It was a tale of intrigue and double-dealing, and of such enormous popular interest one wonders how the Founders would have felt, they who had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defeat Elizabeth IFs ancestor and rid their country forever of his rule and his heirs. Americans had always loved Elizabeth, starting with World War II when, even before America's entry, her father, King George VI, came visiting with his family to make, by symbol rather than overt act or speech, the case for his beleaguered island. When in 1951 George VI's daughter Elizabeth visited Washington with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, President Truman called her a "fairy princess." ... Forty years ago, on June 2, 1953, that same Elizabeth was crowned queen, and American interest boiled over. Live cameras were allowed in Westminster Abbey, and more than twenty million of her subjects saw their monarch as she was crowned. For their part the American television networks, vying to be first with pictures of the coronation, picked it for their first big, brawling, competitive battleground. Television did not seem primitive at the time, of course, and certainly not to those employed in it. There had been such progress in the five years since American television networks began that those inside the industry lived with a continuous sense of marvel, of discovery upon discovery, and all the discoveries, including some not yet public, would be used to show America the pageantry that had been waiting centuries for television to be invented... Sending pictures directly across the Atlantic was possible, but only by pre-empting all existing underwater cables at the prohibitive cost, a regretful Postmaster General informed the House of Commons, of forty million dollars. These were nevertheless small deficiencies compared with the marvel that there was television at all. At that time everyone still remembered when there had been none. Because Americans could not see what was happening in London as it happened, the fight would be over which network would show it first, and only CBS and NBC had the manpower, engineering capacity, and money it would take to play. Still limited and impoverished, with the fewest stars, the weakest stations, the smallest audiences, and, necessarily, the smallest, least aggressive news department, ABC would sit out the heroic struggle. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/great-coronation-war Sep 17 12, 11:34 PM

romeomikegolf

The biggest story on that day was the coronation of Elizabeth II. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/2/newsid_2654000/2654501.stm Sep 17 12, 11:40 PM

davejacobs

Great answer, gtho4 - if only more were like yours! Sep 18 12, 3:48 AM

endoverend

was June 2nd 1953 40 years ago gtho4? Sep 19 12, 9:15 PM