Pearl Harbor Day

[iwasthere]

tt did listen to those archives and i went on youtube to see rare saved news reels concerning this date.

[Towntalk]

If you haven't already saved them, here are links to both CBS and NBC D-Day coverage

CBS

http://archive.org/details/Complete_Broadcast_Day_D-Day



NBC


http://archive.org/details/NBCCompleteBroadcastDDay

[iwasthere]

ty tt for the dday explaination.

[Towntalk]

At midnight EWT (Eastern War Time) the German news agencies started reporting the landings and here in America, key network news commentators who would not normally be on duty were at both networks.

Both CBS and NBC reported these German bulletins with cautionary explanation's "it could be a German lie". OWI (Office of War Information) did censor the war news, but in that the head of OWI was also a highly respected CBS news man ... Elmer Davis ... there was not a 100% total blackout of the news, and given the magnitude of the D-Day buildup in England, it was obvious that something huge was coming down.

From Midnight until the actual announcement at 3:32 am EWT, or thereabouts, the networks just reported what the Germans were saying without acknowledging them as true, but after the official announcement it becomes obvious by listening to the complete D-Day coverage from CBS and NBC that people who would not normally be on duty were there.

Remember, the normal sign off time for the networks was 2:00 am, and the last network news report was at Midnight, with the remainder of the time being band music.

Now we ask, how could so many of the network's top newsmen in New York and Washington get to the networks and get updated so quickly? They couldn't unless they were supermen.

For CBS, the head of their news bureau was Edward R. Morrow, and reporters from his office were out covering the invasion, so he very likely alerted the network without giving too many details and the same for NBC.

What is interesting is the fact that MBS (The Mutual Broadcasting System) did not follow the lead of CBS and NBC (actually NBC Red as there was no ABC at the time. ABC evolved from NBC Blue when the FCC ordered a breakup of NBC.) Mutual relied on the feeds provided by the combined news service and were using reports coming from CBS, NBC, and BBC)

Another curious thing occurred at NBC. Near the time of the official announcement, they sent out two sets of alarms alerting their news staff to get to the studio. one being a special NBC chime signal that wasn't normally used and the second was a "V" sent by Morris code, and immediately after the official announcement their lead commentatior did his first report.

From what we know now of the events of D-Day, all of the networks reported distorted reports that failed to tell what was actually happening, making it sound as if the Germans were caught totally unaware of what was coming down and that the landings were a cake walk. This is why the networks today in covering war news give us more of the facts than they did back then.

[iwasthere]

tt you enlighten me on the dday invasion. i always thought the war dept kept the news media of that time in the dark. i read and was told that pres., certain members of congress and the army brass knew about the dday invasion.

[Towntalk]

Unfortunately no, but both stations would have concentrated on network feeds ... WKBN from CBS and WFMJ from NBC Blue Network. Unlike D-Day when both networks dropped their regular programs to go wall to wall news coverage, on December 7th there were just "Breaking News Bulletins" throughout the day. Both networks were simply interrupting their regular schedule.

Because it happened on a Sunday neither network had a full news staff and the reports coming in were so scant that it wouldn't make sense to go wall to wall.

On the other hand the networks were alerted that a major event was about to take place on D-Day and they had a larger staff both here and in England that allowed them to go wall to wall from 3:00 am to 10:00 am and longer reports throughout the day between regular programs. What is interesting is that a number of regular shows such as Fibber McGee and Molly (NBC) dropped their regular show and just had patriotic music.

Th entire day on D-Day there were no commercials on either CBS or NBC in order to give more time to news reports and this in itself indicated that the networks knew more about D-Day in advance than they were telling their listeners or even their affiliate stations for it wasn't untill about 2:00 am that they announced to their affiliates that they were going to stay on the air beyond their regular sign off time to allow the affiliated to get the OK to stay on the air from their management. Since local stations signed off by 12:30 am I don't know how they handled the programming. If they were off the air at their normal sign off time, they would have missed the first three hours of the programming.

Fortunately there were stations in Cleveland and Pittsburg that had 24 hour schedules that could be heard here in Youngstown.

[iwasthere]

ty, any flavor is appreciated. do you have local broadcast on the sts opinions from this day.

[Towntalk]

These are just a few of the 66 audio files on Pearl Harbor in my library, but will give you a flavor of that day.

[iwasthere]

tt thank you very much for those links. one can go on youtube for these audio tapes when they cannot  go through you, tt. i appreciated the radio announcer giving the play by play on all recordings.

[Towntalk]

Pearl Harbor news


http://archive.org/download/news02/1941-12-07_CBS_Football_Broadcast_-_War_Bulletin.mp3


http://archive.org/download/news02/1941-12-07_CBS_Attempts_To_Call_Honolulu.mp3


http://archive.org/download/news02/1941-12-07_BBC_Washington_Reaction_To_Pearl_Harbor_Attack.mp3


http://archive.org/download/news02/1941-12-08_1150_CBS_Joint_Congress_Session_-_Declaration_Of.mp3


NOTE: Because the file on the President's speech is long it is recommended that you save the link and listen to it off line unless you have a high speed connection.

[jay]

Friday, December 7, is Pearl Harbor Day.

Fly your flag today.