‘See It Now’ Debut With First Ever Commercial Coast To Coast Feed

Today, when news breaks, we can get live pictures from almost anywhere in the world almost instantly, but this was not always the case and we take that ability for granted.

Here’s a reminder of the incredible effort it took just to get live pictures from coast to coast, memorialized in this first broadcast of ‘See It Now’ with host, Edward R. Murrow. Murrow is broadcasting live from the CBS Studio 41 control room in Grand Central, with the legendary Don Hewitt behind him directing.

On September 4, 1951,President Harry S. Truman’s opening speech at The Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco was 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 the ‘See It Now’ debut presented the first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the US, showing a split screen view of the New York Harbor and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

This east – west link was made possible by 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 over three years building it at a cost of $40 million.

This historic debut of ‘See It Now’ 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.” Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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