45 Years Ago Today…Apollo 11 Heads For The Moon: Day 2

Here is the second of eight daily articles written for Eyes Of A Generation by Jodie Peeler on this historic event. Enjoy and share!
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On July 17, 1969 Apollo 11 was coasting toward its historic rendezvous with the Moon. With all the efforts of launch coverage behind them, the three networks coordinated their coverage from New York. Field correspondents at Mission Control in Houston and at several other points around the country provided updates whenever events warranted – and since not much took place during the trans-lunar coast, there wasn’t that much to report. Meanwhile, the networks prepared for longform coverage of the lunar landing and first steps on the Moon, to come on July 20.

While all three networks went to great lengths to provide special coverage, NBC and CBS dueled in terms of elaborate sets. NBC transformed 30 Rock’s famous Studio 8H into the NBC News Space Center, with Chet Huntley anchoring from a ninth-floor platform. Frank McGee and Peter Hackes, both mainstays of NBC’s spaceflight coverage since it began, handled the more detailed aspects of the flight.

A few blocks away, CBS pulled out the stops and transformed the Broadcast Center’s Studio 41 into an elaborate set for the coverage. As described in the CBS commemorative volume “10:56:20 P.M. EDT 7/20/1969,” designer Hugh Gray Raisky developed an anchor desk that stood 24 feet above the studio floor, set against an artist’s conception of the Milky Way. Two six-foot globes, one of the Earth and one of the Moon, stood to either side of the desk. Nearby, correspondent David Schoumacher provided updates from a status desk. Elsewhere in the studio were models and dioramas to simulate what was going on.

One of the most famous was a conveyor belt with a simulated lunar surface as seen in the photos below. In conjunction with a model of the Apollo spacecraft, the “lunar surface” was keyed against a space backdrop to provide a picture of the spacecraft flying in lunar orbit. In all, CBS deployed 16 cameras throughout Studio 41 during the Apollo 11 coverage, doing everything from covering the anchor desks to providing information for the anchors over a closed-circuit setup.

While NBC brought spacecraft mock-ups into 8H for technical explanations of the Apollo spacecraft, CBS used live remotes from where the spacecraft were built. Correspondent Bill Stout reported from North American Rockwell in Downey, California, where he sat inside a life-size model of the Command Module with North American test pilot Leo Krupp showed viewers what was going on. At the Grumman factory in Bethpage, Long Island, where the lunar modules were built, correspondent Nelson Benton did likewise with Grumman test pilot Scott MacLeod.

In the next installment, we’ll take a look at the unorthodox methods that got live coverage of Apollo 11 to the people of Alaska.

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