" WE CAN NOW PROJECT..." ELECTION NIGHT in AMERICA By. Sean P Mccracken "CBS NEWS Now Projects...NBC NEWS Is Read
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" WE CAN NOW PROJECT..." ELECTION NIGHT IN AMERICA By. Sean P McCracken "CBS NEWS now projects...NBC NEWS is ready to declare ...ABC NEWS is now making a call in....CNN now estimates...declares...projects....calls...predicts...retracts..." We hear these few opening words and wait on the edges of our seats as the names and places which follow these familiar predicates make very well be those which tell us in the United States who will occupy the White House for the next four years. We hear the words, follow the talking-heads and read the ever changing scripts which scroll, flash or blink across our television screens. It is a ritual that has been repeated an-masse every four years since 1952...and for a select few, 1948. Since its earliest days, television has had a love affair with politics, albeit sometimes a strained one. From the first primitive experiments at the Republican National Convention in 1940, to the multi angled, figure laden, information over-loaded spectacles of today, the "happening" that unfolds every four years on the second Tuesday in November, known as "Election Night" still holds a special place in either our heart...or guts. Somehow, it still manages to keep us glued to our television for hours on end. This one night that rolls around every four years has "grown up" with many of us over the last 64 years. Staring off as little more than chalk boards, name plates and radio announcers plopped in front of large, monochromatic cameras that barely sent signals beyond the limits of New York City and gradually morphing into color-laden, graphic-filled, information packed, multi channel marathons that can be seen by virtually...and virtually seen by...almost any human on the planet. With constantly changing personalities, technology and presentation methods...It has been an interesting ride. BLAZING THE WAY The Museum of Television and Radio in New York holds one very special piece in its collection. A kinescope (A method of recording live television images with a 16mm film camera in the days before video tape or DVDs) that was created by NBC/LIFE on November 3, 1948. Remember that famous Black & White photograph of President Harry Truman holding up a newspaper emblazed with the erroneous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman"? Well, it wasn't only newspapers and still photographers who were working that night...the "TV people" were too. NBC television, in cooperation with LIFE magazine, joined forces to bring the sights, sounds and returns of Election Night 1948 to those Americans fortunate enough to have television sets. The methods and means employed were primitive by technological standards, however, in so very many ways what was seen on the small screen that night...and morning...looks very much like what was to follow, and, to some extent, what still remains. Three anchormen (Although the term had not yet been coined...wait 4 years) were seated around a purpose-built desk. H.V. Kaltenborn, Bob Trout and John Cameron Swayze...of TIMEX watch fame, sat beside one another with NBC microphones (for both television AND radio) in front of them. A monitor, sloped at an angle, was built into the desk in front of the three men to allow them to follow what was happening. Tally boards were present...in the form of chalk boards... to display the returns numerically or for the benefit of anyone who could not figure out how to adjust the sound on their set. Live cameras were stationed in the headquarters of both President Truman and challenger Thomas E. Dewey, and images of both men and their running mates were front and center, all blown up and printed on matte boards made to look like LIFE magazine covers. There were no coast-to -coast hook-ups (again, wait four more years) no on-screen graphics, no giant map of the United Stated colored red, blue, and also white...to accommodate Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats...and no local cut-ways and no constantly scrolling text at the bottom of the screen. One quote from that evening which MAY ring a bell with some, "Ohio was the payoff". A telegram to this effect finally brought about a concession from Thomas Dewey at 11:18AM. 1948, however, was merely akin to dipping one's toe into the bathwater. The true marriage of Election Night and television was still yet to come. By 1952 the estimated number of television sets in the United States had grown to something in the neighborhood of 15 million. Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton, Milton Berle, Ed Murrow and David Brinkley were now household names . In 1951, Ed Murrow linked the east and west coasts of America via WCBS in New York and KPIX in San Francisco. By the time Election Night 1952 rolled around television was ready and well rehearsed for what was to come. During the network's coverage of the summer conventions, a new name and face was added to the television lexicon. To serve as MC...later changed to "Anchorman"...CBS newsman Walter Cronkite was charged with providing narration, explanation and timing for CBS's coverage. The coverage and Cronkite's reception were so well received that he was returned to CBS HQ in New York to perform the same task on November 5, 1952. Cronkite was not alone on the set that night, those at home watching and listening would also see the faces and hear the familiar voices of Charles Collingwood, Eric Severeid, and Betty Furness...dropping by every now and then, both live and on film, to try and sell post-war Americans something made by Westinghouse. Furness would often spend much of her time opening and closing ovens and refrigerators , garnering almost as much on-air time as the newsmen or the candidates. SIDE NOTE: Furness was seen so often during CBS's Election Coverage from 1952-1960 that one young, baby boomer dress as a cowboy was characterized as asking his television -watching father "Who's winning dad, Ike, Stevenson...or Betty Furness"? Viewers also got the unique experience of getting to watch and listen to Charles Collingwood converse with another "guest" in the CBS studio that night...an "Electronic Brain". The brain was actually an enormous UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) computer, provided to CBS by Remington Rand to help out with the tallying and projecting of election results. Collingwood would turn to the computer and, in jest, ask who it projected as the winner of the Presidency...Democrat Adlai Stevenson or Republican Dwight Eisenhower. Believe it or not, the "new fangled thing" actually worked. Before 9pm EST, UNIVAC whirled, whizzed, clinged, clanged and then projected the electoral outcome within 1 electoral vote. CBS was still skeptical at the time and did not release the projections for over an hour. By 1956, NBC and ABC had caught the computer bug and employed the "Electronic Brains" in their coverage. In order to broadcast as much data as possible in a visual manner, the CBS Election Night studio had to be huge. In the days before Chroma-key, character generators or digital graphics, any numerical figures or words seen on screen had to be physically made. While chalk boards sufficed in 1948, magnetic boards or rolling wheel-type displays, like those seen on old gasoline pumps , were now the norm. Often, dark boards with white lettering would be shown photographed by one camera and then another scene "mixed" or partially dissolved into it in order to give the illusion of on-screen wording. By 1956 there were a few changes noted by the astute viewer. The financially strapped Du-Mont Network went by the wayside. The "soon-to-be-in-third-place-forever" ABC debuted in 1954. Over at NBC, just one week before election night, David Brinkley was teamed up with a serious, humble and bespeckled partner named Chet Huntley...9 years before the "The Odd Couple" was even written. Dwight Eisenhower once again defeated Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson in a landslide and, once again, the networks brought the returns to America in much the same way and by mostly the same people. Little did any of them know that 1956 was to start an election night trend that would run until 1984, a cycle of "landslide" then "cliffhanger". The first of these cliffhangers would come in 1960 and would change the face of not only television news, but television as a whole. GROWING UP If television of the 1940s and 50s was in "infancy" then the 1960s and 70s can only be described as its "puberty"...acne, temper, raging hormones and all. But along with the usual growing pains, television news would blossom in the 1960s like never before or since. It would start out the decade with the same ol' names and faces set in monochrome, and end with both the old and young faces broadcast around the world "In Living Color". In 1960 a new political wind was blowing across the nation. For the first time, two men born in the 20th century were to face off against one another...two men who knew television and its wide reaching effects quite well. Both Richard Nixon and John Kennedy had appeared on news programs like Meet the Press, The Longines Chronoscope and Face the Nation many times since 1951. Kennedy had been seen often during the telecasts of some Senate hearings and Nixon, as Vice President, was never far from a camera. Nixon and Kennedy squared off in four, 1-hour long debates in the months leading up to election night. Nixon did not make a good "showing" in the first debate, breaking one of the cardinal rules of television and stage by not applying a layer of make-up to offset the harsh studio lights.