If you get up early in the morning to watch Coronation coverage in the US - or if you don't! - consider how important the last one was in the history of TV technology (a π§΅of indeterminate length)
It's 1953. TV has been established for a few years now in most big cities. The coast-to-coast coaxial cable has allowed live nationwide coverage of big domestic events like the World Series and political conventions for a year or two. 2/
(But imagine: it was only in 1951 that it first became possible for humans to watch a live picture of both the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts simultaneously. Think about what a big deal that was!) 3/
What doesn't exist yet, and won't for another decade, is the ability to send a live picture ACROSS the oceans. Undersea cables and shortwave radio can send audio coverage, but it's five years before Sputnik and so you can't bounce a picture to a satellite. 4/
There's also not videotape yet. That won't come for three more years. If you want to record an image and sound and send it somewhere else, you have to do it on 16mm or 35mm film, which then needs to be processed before it can be projected and broadcast. 5/
So how do you get film of the coronation on the air to US viewers as quickly as possible, since you can't do it live? If you're either of the two major networks at the time, NBC and CBS, you go super high-tech! You charter planes! 6/
And you outfit those planes with film processors and editing stations, so that you can develop the film while it's being flown across the Atlantic - not to NYC but to Boston, because it's a closer point where you can feed coverage into the network. 7/
It turned into a high-profile race to see which network could get their plane to Boston first. CBS won by about 45 minutes, and bragged about it - even though they ended up playing the reels of film out of order! 8/
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
"But wait! You said TWO networks! What about ABC?"
In 1953, ABC was a very distant third, with fewer affiliates and a much smaller budget. So instead of chartering a plane, it looked across the border and picked up coverage from Canada's CBC... 9/
In 1953, ABC was a very distant third, with fewer affiliates and a much smaller budget. So instead of chartering a plane, it looked across the border and picked up coverage from Canada's CBC... 9/
The CBC, which had only been on TV for a year and in only three cities, ended up beating the US networks thanks to Royal Air Force bombers that sped THEIR film across the Atlantic to Goose Bay, Labrador... 10/
And then Royal Canadian Air Force jets picked up the film reels and flew them to Montreal, where they went out on the CBC - and thus on ABC! - 27 minutes before CBS. 11/
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
How many people saw the CBC/ABC coverage? Probably not many, since ABC didn't have primary affiliates in very many cities back then. But apparently NBC figured out what ABC was up to and made arrangements to pick up some of its coverage, just to get on the air ahead of CBS. 12/
In an era of constant live coverage of everything, it's pretty amazing to think of how much work was expended just to get some grainy black-and-white pictures on the air 11 or 12 hours after the event was over. We forget just how easy it all is now! 13/fin
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