The first word came over the television airwaves at 1:40 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite broke into "As the World Turns" with an audio announcement over a bulletin slide: "In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting." Minutes later, Cronkite appeared on screen from CBS's New York newsroom to field live reports from Dallas and read news bulletins from Associated Press and CBS Radio. Eddie Barker, news director for CBS's Dallas affiliate KRLD-TV, reported live from the Trade Mart, where the president was to have attended a luncheon. As a stationary camera panned the ballroom, closing in on a black waiter who wiped tears from his face, Barker related rumors "that the president is dead." Back in New York, a voice off-camera told Cronkite the same news, which, the anchorman stressed, was "totally unconfirmed." Switching back to Dallas, Barker again reported "the word we have is that the president is dead." Though he cautioned "this we do not know for a fact," the visual image at the Trade Mart was ominous: work­ man could be seen removing the presidential seal from a podium on the dais.

     Behind the scenes, at KRLD's newsroom, CBS's Dallas bureau chief Dan Rather scrambled for information. He learned from two sources at Parkland Hospital that the president had died, a report that went out prematurely over CBS Radio. Citing Rather, Cronkite reported the president's death but noted the lack of any official confirmation. At 2:37 P.M. CBS news editor Ed Bliss Jr., handed Cronkite an Associated Press wire report. Cronkite took a long second to read it to himself before intoning: "From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1:00 P.M. Central Standard Time, two o'clock Eastern Standard Time." He paused and looked at the studio clock. "Some 38 minutes ago." Momentarily losing his composure, Cronkite winced, removed his eyeglasses, and cleared his throat before resuming with the observation that Vice President Lyndon Johnson would presumably take the oath of office to become the 36th president of the United States.

     To appreciate the enormity of the task faced by the networks over the next four days, it is necessary to recall that in 1963, before the days of high-tech, globally linked, and sleekly mobile news-gathering units, the technical limitations of broadcast journalism militate against the coverage of live and fast-breaking events in multiple locations. TV cameras required two hours ,Jf equipment warm-up to become "hot" enough for operation. Video signals were transmitted cross-country via "hard wire" coaxial cable or microwave relay. "Spot coverage" of unfolding news in the field demanded speed and mobility, and since television cameras had to be tethered to enormous wires and electrical Systems, 16mm film crews still dominated location coverage, with the consequent delay in transportation, processing, and editing of footage. The challenges of juggling live broadcasts from across the nation with overseas audio transmissions, of compiling instant documentaries and special reports, and of acquiring and putting out raw film footage over the air was an off-the-cuff experiment in what NBC correspondent Bill Ryan called "controlled panic."

     The resultant technical glitches served to heighten a national atmosphere of crisis and imbalance. NBC's coverage during that first hour showed correspondents Frank McGee, Chet Huntley, and Bill Ryan fumbling for a simple telephone link to Dallas, where reporter Robert McNeil was on the scene at Parkland Hospital. Manning the telephone and bobbling a malfunctioning speaker attachment, McGee had to repeat McNeil's words for the home audience because NBC technicians could not establish a direct audio feed. As Mc­ Neil reported White House aide Mac Kilduff's official announcement of the president's death, the phone link suddenly kicked in. Creating an eerie echo of the death notice, McGee, unaware, continued to repeat McNeil's now audible words. "After being shot at," said Mc­ Neil. "After being shot," repeated McGee needlessly. "By an unknown assailant ... " "By an unknown assailant ... "

     Throughout Friday afternoon, information rushed in about the condition of Texas governor John Connolly, also wounded in the assassination; about the whereabouts and security of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, whom broadcasters made a determined effort to call "President Johnson"; and, in the later afternoon, about the capture of a suspected assassin, identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine associated with left­ wing causes.

     So urgent was the craving for news and imagery that unedited film footage, still blotched and wet from fresh development, was put out over the air: of shocked pedestrians along the motorcade route and tearful Dallas residents outside Parkland Hospital, of the president and first lady, vital and smiling, from earlier in the day. The simultaneity of live video reports of a dead president intercut with recently developed film footage of a lively president delivering a good-humored breakfast speech that morning in Fort Worth, Texas, made for a jarring by-play of mixed visual messages. Correspondents on all three networks were apt reflections of spectator reaction: disbelief, shock, confusion, and grief. Grasping for points of comparison, many re­called the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 12, 1945. NBC's Frank McGee rightly predicted, "that this afternoon, wherever you were and whatever you might have been doing when you received the word of the death of President Kennedy, that is a moment that will be emblazoned in your memory and you will never forget it ... as long as you live."

     At 5:59 P.M. on Friday, the president's body was re­turned to Andrews Air Force Base, where television caught an obscure, dark, and ghostly vessel taxiing in on the runway. When the casket was lowered from the plane, glimpses of Jacqueline Kennedy appeared on screen, her dress and stockings still visibly blood­ stained. With the new first lady, Lady Bird Johnson, by his side, President Johnson made a brief statement before the cameras. "We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed," he intoned flatly. "I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help-and God's." Speculations about the funeral arrangements and updates on the accused assassin in Dallas rounded out the evening's coverage. NBC concluded its broadcaster.g day with a symphonic tribute from the NBC Studio Orchestra.

     On Saturday the trauma was eased somewhat by religious ritual and constitutional tradition. Close friends, members of the president's family, government officials, and the diplomatic community arrived to pay their respects at the White House, where the president's body was lying in state. Former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower spoke for the cameras, offering condolences to the Kennedy family and expressions of faith in democratic institutions. Instant documentary tributes to the late president appeared on all three networks: quick, makeshift compilations of home movies of Hyannisport frolics, press conference witticisms, and formal addresses to the nation. Meanwhile, more information dribbled in about Oswald, the accused assassin, whom the Dallas police paraded through the halls of the city jail. That evening CBS presented a memorial concert by t:ie Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Normandy conducting.

     On  Sunday  an  unprecedented  televised  event blasted the story of the assassination of John F. Kennedy out of the realm of tragedy and into surrealism: the on-camera murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, telecast live. At 12:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, as preparations were being made for the solemn procession of the caisson bearing the president's casket from the White House to the Capitol rotunda, the accused assassin was about to be transferred from the Da[as City Jail to the Dallas County Jail. Alone of the three networks, NBC elected to switch over from coverage of the preparations in Washington, D.C., to the transfer of the prisoner in Dallas. CBS was also receiving a live feed from Dallas in its New York control room but opted to stay with the D.C. feed. Thus, only NBC carried the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald live. "He's been shot! He's been shot! Lee Oswald has been shot!" shouted NBC correspondent Tom Petit. "There is ab:m­ lute panic. Pandemonium has broken out." Within minutes, CBS broadcast its own live feed from Dallas. For the rest of the day, all three networks deployed their Ampex videotape technology to rewind and replay the scene again and again. Almost every American in proximity to a television watched transfixed.

     Amid the scuffle after the shooting, a journalist's voice could be heard gasping, "This is unbelievable." The next day New York Times television critic Jack Gould called the on-air shooting of Oswald "easily the most extraordinary moments of TV that a set-owner ever watched." In truth, as much as the Kennedy assas­sination itself, the on-air murder of the president's alleged assassin created an almost vertiginous imbalance in television viewers, a sense of American life out of control and let loose from traditional moorings.

     Later that same afternoon, in stark counterpoint to the ongoing chaos in Dallas, thousands of mourners lined up to file past the president's flag-draped coffin in the Capitol rotunda. Senator Mike Mansfield intoned a mournful, poetic eulogy. Holding daughter Caroline's hand, the president's widow knelt by the casket and kissed the flag, the little girl looking up to her mother for guidance. "For many," recalled broadcasting historian Erik Barnouw, "it was the most unbearable moment in four days, the most unforgettable."

     Throughout Sunday, tributes to the late president and scenes of mourners at the Capitol intertwined with news of the assassin and the assassin of the assassin, a Dallas strip-club owner named Jack Ruby. Remote coverage of church services around the nation and solemn musical interludes were intercut and dissolved into the endless stream of mourners in Washington. That evening, at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, ABC telecast A Tribute to John F. Kennedy from the Arts, a somber variety show featuring classical music and dramatic readings from the Bible and Shakespeare. Host Fredric March recited the Gettysburg Address, Charl­ton Heston read from the Psalms and the poetry of Robert Frost, and Marian Anderson sang Negro spiri­tuals.

     The next day-Monday, November 25, a national day of mourning-bore witness to an extraordinary political-religious spectacle: the ceremonial transfer of the president's coffin by caisson from the Capitol rotunda to St. Matthew's Cathedral, where the funeral mass was to be celebrated by Richard Cardinal Cushing, and on across the Potomac River for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Television coverage began at 7:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, with scenes from Washington, where all evening mourners had been filing past the coffin in the Capitol rotunda. At 10:38 A.M., the coffin was placed on the caisson for the procession to St. Matthew's Cathedral. Television printed a series of memorable snapshot images. During the mass, as the phrase from the president's first inaugural address came through loudspeakers ("Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country"), cameras dissolved to a shot of the flag-draped coffin. No sooner did commentators remind viewers that this day marked the president's son's third birthday, than outside the church, as the caisson passed by, little John F. Kennedy Jr. saluted. The spirited stallion Black Jack, a riderless steed with boots pointed backward in the stirrup, kicked up definitely. Awed by the regal solemnity, network commentators were quiet and restrained, allowing the medium of the moving image to record a series of eloquent sounds: drums and bagpipes, hoofbeats, the cadence steps of the honor guard, and, at the burial at Arlington, the final sour note of a bugle playing "Taps."

     The quiet power of the spectacle was a masterpiece of televisual choreography. Besides maintaining their own cameras and crews, each of the networks contributed cameras for pool coverage. CBS's Arthur Kane was assigned the task of directing the coverage of the procession and funeral, coordinating more than 60 cameras stationed strategically along the route. NBC took charge of feeding the signal via relay communications satellite to 23 countries around the globe. Even the Soviet Union, in broadcasting first, used a five­ minute news report sent via Telestar. CBS estimated 50 engineers worked on the project and NBC 60, while ABC put its total staff at 138. Unlike the fast-breaking news from Dallas on Friday and Sunday, the coverage of a stationary, scheduled event built on the acquired expertise of network journalism.

     The colossal achievement came with a hefty price tag. Trade figures estimated the total cost to the networks at $40 million, with some $22 million lost in programming and commercial revenue over the four days. Ironically, on one of the few occasions when none of the networks cared about ratings, the television audience was massive. Though multicity Nielsen ratings for prime-time hours during the Black Week­ end were calculated modestly (NBC at 24, CBS at 16, and ABC at 10), during intervals of peak viewership--­ as when the news of Oswald's murder struck-Nielsen estimated that fully 93 percent of televisions in the na­tion were tuned to the coverage. As if hypnotized, many Americans watched for hours at a stretch, in an unprecedented immersion in deep-involvement spectatorship.

     Not incidentally, the Zapruder film, the famous super 8mm record of the assassination shot by Abraham Zapruder, was not a part of the original televisual experience. Despite the best efforts of CBS's Dan Rather, exclusive rights to the most historically significant piece of amateur filmmaking in the 20th century were obtained by Life magazine. The Zapruder film was not shown on television until March 1975, when it aired on ABC's Goodnight America. Almost certainly, however, in 1963 it would have been deemed too gruesome and disrespectful of the feelings of the Kennedy family to have been broadcast on network television.

     The saturation coverage of the assassination and burial of John F. Kennedy, and the startling murder of his alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, yielded a shared media experience of astonishing unanimity and unmatched impact, an imbedded cultural memory that as years passed seemed to comprise a collective consciousness for a generation. In time, it would seem appropriate that the telegenic president was memorialized by the medium that helped make him. For its part, television-so long sneered at as a "boob tube" presided over by avaricious lords of kitsch-emerged from its four days in November as the only American institution accorded unconditional praise. Variety's George Rosen spoke of the consensus: "In a totally unforeseen and awesome crisis, TV immediately, almost automatically, was transformed into a participating organ of American life whose value, whose indispensability, no Nielsen audimeters could measure or statistics reveal." The medium Kennedy's Federal Communications Commission commissioner Newton Minow condemned as a "vast wasteland" had served, in extremis, as a national lifeline.