Sunday, November 7, 1954…’Face The Nation’ Debuts, CBS

Wait till you see this video of the first ever presentation of ‘Face The Nation’! The first thing you see is a closeup of a camera’s lens turret with a surrounding that is rather confusing…until the shot widens out. Only then do we see that the camera shooting the guest is behind the wall and shooting over the shoulders of the panel.

That first ‘Face The Nation’ guest was Sen. Joe McCarthy and if you listen to him, I think his tone will sound eerily familiar. A few weeks before, he had been on NBC’s ‘Meet The Press’ and brought a gun to the studio. This time, he wasn’t packing heat. Very Tea Party.

In the early days, ‘Face The Nation’ was originally broadcast on Sunday afternoons at 2:30 eastern. The program’s original host was Tedd Koop, then the Washington D.C. bureau chief for CBS News and originated from the network owned WTOP in Washington.

The show as created by the late Frank Stanton, who ran the network in the early days. When asked why he started it, he said simply, “Because NBC had ‘Meet the Press,’ and I thought we needed a program like that.” Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtVJFBSMXDk

In the first Face the Nation broadcast on television, Sen. Joseph McCarthy responds to questions about his infamous hearings. (CBS NEWS)

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