1951: Coast To Coast Television Now Possible

On September 4, 1951,President Harry S. Truman’s opening speech before a conference in San Francisco is broadcast across the nation, marking the first time a television program was broadcast from coast to coast. The broadcast, via then-state-of-the-art microwave technology, was picked up by 87 stations in 47 cities, according to CBS.

On November 18, 1951, Edward R. Murrow on See It Now presents the first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the US, showing a split screen view of the New York Harbor and the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. That video from Studio 41 at the CBS Grand Central location is below…Don Hewitt is directing.

This east – west link was made possible because of AT&T’s new microwave radio-relay skyway, the first facilities to transmit telephone, radio and television across the United States by radio rather than wire or cable.

The new route, at the time the longest microwave system in the world, relayed calls along a chain of 107 microwave towers, spaced about 30 miles apart. AT&T spent about three years building it at a cost of $40 million.

On Sept. 4, the largest single television audience to date – estimated at more than 30 million people – saw and heard President Harry Truman open the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco. The nation’s first coast-to-coast telecast, this broadcast was made possible when AT&T met a U.S. State Department request to advance the TV opening of the new system by a month.

The historic program went off without a hitch. The New York Times reported that “the image reproduced on screens in the New York area, nearly 3,000 miles from the scene, had excellent clarity and compared favorably with programs of local origin. The contrast was of first-rate quality and there was no distortion.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7fu5M5OFe8

A clip from the first program of the 50’s CBS series See It Now with Edward . Morrow.

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