We are used to television these days… in fact, some have said it’s no longer relevant… BUT in the 1960s, it was a different story.
Families gathered around the single family ‘television set’ as it was called then, to watch shows that were written and presented with ‘everyman’ in mind. And the evening news was an important source of information for the majority of Americans.
John F. Kennedy was the first ‘television’ President.
From the time he was elected as the Senator of Massachusetts in 1953 until his very publicly televised death, his image appeared on the television screens of America and citizens were used to the distinctive Bostonian accent of JFK. You can listen to it here in this speech “We choose to go to the moon.”
Here, Kennedy promised that an American man would walk on the moon by the end of the 1960s. JFK did not live to see his promise become a reality because it wasn’t until July 20, 1969 that Neil Armstrong became the first human being to step on the moon.
Families gathered around the single family ‘television set’ as it was called then, to watch shows that were written and presented with ‘everyman’ in mind. And the evening news was an important source of information for the majority of Americans.
Even the key players in the Kennedy White House watched television collectively, as shown here in this image from May 1961 when President and Mrs Kennedy, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and other members of the administration watch Alan B. Shepard become the first American to arrive in space. But JFK had even bigger ambitions for the American space programme and NASA.
And so to Dallas…
JFK’s Assassination tarnished the nation’s image of itself
The assassination of the 35th President of the United States, who was sitting next to his wife in an open-top car as they drove through downtown Dallas was the television news event of the century, matched only later by the Apollo 11 space mission to the moon.
The events of the Dark Weekend caused Americans to question all that they believed about themselves as a great nation of progress. If someone could kill their President in cold blood and also eliminate his accused assassin, what was really happening in the Land of the Free? Who was at the centre of these ‘dark arts’? The ‘century of assassinations’ continued, with the eventual assassinations of:
- Malcolm X 21 February, 1965
- Martin Luther King, Jr. 4 April 1968
- Bobby Kennedy 6 June 1968
Television steps up to offer a New Year’s balm to a grieving nation
At a time when the American public really needed it, a family of hillbillies called the Clampetts, who just happened to be from Texas, arrived in the glamorous neighbourhood of Beverly Hills after striking ‘gold’ by discovering an oil well on their land.
The Beverly Hillbillies overcame the scepticism of its critics to become the Uber-show of the 1960s. Its most popular episode was The Beverly Hillbillies ‘The Giant Jackrabbit’.
Still loved by fans of the re-run, it remains the 6th most watched television episode in the history of American television.
Why was it so popular?
1963 was a rather tragic year because it marked the beginning of a spate of assassinations & murders that would span the decade.
The Giant Jackrabbit episode was aired on January 8, 1964 around 7 weeks after the nation had buried JFK. Television audiences wanted to forget the horror of the moving images associated with the assassination and ring in 1964 with a new sense of hope.
Television audiences were seeking something light-hearted and comforting and The Beverly Hillbillies provided it. It was a wonderfully funny rags-to-riches story that appealed to the notion that anything can happen to anyone in America. But in this episode, Americans were reminded that in the television sitcoms of the 1960s, mostly good things happened.
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