Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is the first
Speaker 2: episode of the two double two six.
Speaker 1: I thought there was already another episode out.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is the first one, Chuck. I think this
Speaker 2: comes out on one to one.
Speaker 1: Really twenty six, okay, pretty sure. Yeah, I thought we
Speaker 1: had already crept into twenty six. But that's no matter
Speaker 1: because it's still two five for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some weird time stuff that's going on. We're
Speaker 2: essentially straddling two years right now. And uh, I'm wearing
Speaker 2: a silver spacesuit because of that.
Speaker 1: All that to say, if we're a little loose is
Speaker 1: because this is our last recording session of the year,
Speaker 1: and so we're closing this out or opening up the
Speaker 1: next year with a good old fashioned top ten that's
Speaker 1: not a ten, like just like the old days.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're finishing out twenty twenty five and stuff
Speaker 2: you should know fashion.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, look just like we did in probably twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably, Chuck. If you'll allow me to begin.
Speaker 1: Boy, it's just a classic old school opening, Chuck, do
Speaker 1: you have a TV.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen TV?
Speaker 1: I knew it was coming. Yes, it was either that.
Speaker 2: Or Webster's defined TV right, right, one of the two.
Speaker 2: I've seen TV too. Not only have I seen ATV,
Speaker 2: I've watched what's broadcast on TV as well multiple times
Speaker 2: throughout my life.
Speaker 1: Same.
Speaker 2: It's funny we chose this moments that changed the world,
Speaker 2: TV moments that changed the world. And as you're kind
Speaker 2: of researching this, she realized, like, for better or worse man,
Speaker 2: TV is like it may modern culture more than anything
Speaker 2: else I think in the entire world. Would I would
Speaker 2: argue more than the internet? Ooh interesting, Yeah, I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna say it.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm not going to argue. I'm a not
Speaker 1: an arguing mood.
Speaker 2: Well, people who disagree, just follow us on this journey
Speaker 2: into TV moments that changed the world, and maybe your
Speaker 2: your opinion will be changed either way. I don't fault you,
Speaker 2: all right, Great, So let's start at the beginning, when,
Speaker 2: like the day that TV really kicked off in earnest,
Speaker 2: there was a day that this happened. It was April thirtieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine, in Flushing, New York, on Long Island.
Speaker 2: And if you are familiar with that date in that area,
Speaker 2: you may know that this was the nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 2: World's Fair, and this is where TV got its start,
Speaker 2: where it was really kind of unveiled to the public
Speaker 2: at large.
Speaker 1: That's right, not the nineteen forty World's Fair. HowStuffWorks dot
Speaker 1: com because there was not one.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, you know, TV had been around for a bit,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't super widespread at this point. I feel
Speaker 1: like we talked about this a lot lately for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yes, stuff is just really clicking these days. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure why.
Speaker 1: It really is. But they had broadcast limitations. They could
Speaker 1: only broadcast, you know, for a limited number of miles,
Speaker 1: like out a limited number of miles. But by the
Speaker 1: time that World's Fare came along, they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a chance to make a really big splash.
Speaker 1: The RCA Corporation, the Radio Corporation of America, which also
Speaker 1: then led the way in TVs. They were putting out
Speaker 1: some pretty good televisions at the point, but they were
Speaker 1: luxury items, and again they didn't have like the most
Speaker 1: regular broadcasting going on. But they knew that this World's
Speaker 1: Fare was a chance to make a super big splash.
Speaker 2: Right, So, yeah, this is where they were going to
Speaker 2: start selling TVs to the public. The problem is is,
Speaker 2: you can have all the TVs in the world, but
Speaker 2: if you don't have anything to watch on it, good point,
Speaker 2: what are you going to do? Nothing? You're going to
Speaker 2: sit there like a jackass and look at a blank TV.
Speaker 2: So Luckily thought of this and they founded NBC, the
Speaker 2: National Broadcasting Company, to start broadcasting stuff. So they brought
Speaker 2: the whole thing together, the broadcasting and the TVs themselves,
Speaker 2: and they debuted it on April thirtieth, nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 2: when they I think created the world's first live television
Speaker 2: broadcast of Franklin Roosevelt kicking off the nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 2: World's Fair.
Speaker 1: That's right, And we did mention this one in another episode.
Speaker 1: But he was, you know, sort of the the first president,
Speaker 1: daddy of TV, granddaddy of TV. And like you said,
Speaker 1: he opened it up there and you know, NBC had
Speaker 1: gotten there and they had their you know, you know,
Speaker 1: now antiquated TV technology all lined up. It was just
Speaker 1: pretty whiz bang at the time. Sure, and they sent
Speaker 1: signals through these mobile broadcasting trucks, which I mean, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. That in the nineteen thirties they had the
Speaker 1: technology to even accomplish that, right, So it's pretty impressive
Speaker 1: still to this day, and broadcasts that signal out to
Speaker 1: about two thousand viewers, which seemed like a big number
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: I imagine I'm still impressed with news fans. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: sure of the time, which is our time.
Speaker 1: I'm impressed with news fans today, That's.
Speaker 2: What I mean. Oh, okay, I didn't get it across
Speaker 2: very well.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one thing I saw I was looking up
Speaker 2: pictures of this nineteen thirty nine Worlds Fair, the RCA pavilion.
Speaker 2: Apparently they built one of their televisions within transparent I
Speaker 2: guess class or something like that, maybe plastic, so you
Speaker 2: could see the internal working part so that people wouldn't
Speaker 2: think it was just some sort of trick.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, interesting, that's how new it was. Yeah. Oddly,
Speaker 1: since we're recording our Christmas episode, I feel like this
Speaker 1: pause before the next one is going to include like
Speaker 1: jingle bells and things, right, But it's not going to.
Speaker 1: We're just simply moving on to another one, which is
Speaker 1: Disney's Wonderful World of Color. I'm sure you like I
Speaker 1: grew up watching I guess by the time we were
Speaker 1: watching it in the seventies, and or me in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and you likely in the eighties, it was called The
Speaker 1: Wonderful World of Disney.
Speaker 2: I watched Walt Disney Presents, I think, is what it
Speaker 2: was for me.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so I guess, yeah, since I'm only a
Speaker 1: year older than you, I was watching The Wonderful World
Speaker 1: of Disney. Because this show had some title changes. But
Speaker 1: the reason we're talking about this at all, it's because
Speaker 1: of the advent of color television, which Walt Disney himself
Speaker 1: really got behind and was like, Hey, I want to
Speaker 1: be the dude that kind of brings this to the masses.
Speaker 2: Right, because just like how you could have TVs but
Speaker 2: nothing to broadcast, you could have color TVs and if
Speaker 2: you weren't broadcasting in color, what's the point. And again,
Speaker 2: this was an issue for RCA, and by then, of
Speaker 2: course they had NBC, and NBC was rolling pretty well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but Walt Disney's anthology series had started years before and
Speaker 2: it was on ABC. NBC wasn't broadcasting in color. So
Speaker 2: Walt Disney personally held a meeting with NBC and said,
Speaker 2: we want to do this, apparently saying he said that.
Speaker 2: He said, Bellas, I want this deal. If necessary, I'll
Speaker 2: stand on my head in Macy's window.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and all the executives said, you don't have to
Speaker 1: do that. It's a pretty good idea, So why are
Speaker 1: you being weird?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he was just that enthusiastic about the whole thing.
Speaker 2: But he personally went and pitched the idea of the NBC.
Speaker 2: And the reason why again is NBC was the first
Speaker 2: network to broadcast in color, and so Walt Disney really
Speaker 2: kind of pushed this through because NBC would have broadcasting
Speaker 2: color either way, but Walt Disney wanted to do it
Speaker 2: in like high style.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And this is a TV show that
Speaker 1: launched in nineteen fifty four and ran for thirty four seasons,
Speaker 1: obviously at first in black and white. And like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, you know the name changes. I guess they
Speaker 1: had one, you know, between My Birth and your Birth,
Speaker 1: because it was initially called Disney's Wonderful and then Magical
Speaker 1: World of Disney. Yeah, and then when the color debuted,
Speaker 1: he was like, we really want to be sort of
Speaker 1: obvious with this, so let's call it Disney's wonderful World
Speaker 1: of Color. Yeah, but we still haven't even said what
Speaker 1: this was. I mean you mentioned anthology series. It was.
Speaker 1: It was like a variety show essentially. They had cartoons
Speaker 1: and stuff. I remember when I was a kid that
Speaker 1: the Davy Crockett TV Show, and it says in this
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works article it launched the coonskin cap craze.
Speaker 1: And I have a picture of little five year old
Speaker 1: me with a musket and a leather vest and a
Speaker 1: coonskin cap on my head. So I was into that.
Speaker 2: I had one too, but I don't have a picture
Speaker 2: of it, so I can't prove it.
Speaker 1: I can probably dig that up and throw it up
Speaker 1: on the Instagram maybe to align with this, so I'll
Speaker 1: try and find that.
Speaker 2: You got it.
Speaker 1: I got it.
Speaker 2: So they were also like a lot of documentary programming, right,
Speaker 2: and you would think like, okay, hard hitting frontline esque documentaries. No,
Speaker 2: not at all. It meant that they would go and
Speaker 2: film stuff under various themes at Disneyland. They were essentially
Speaker 2: big ads for Disneyland. He used that big time, And
Speaker 2: I mean they were well produced and interesting, sure, but
Speaker 2: they really went to that well quite a bit in
Speaker 2: every episode, not in the first episode though, instead the
Speaker 2: first episode, and this is the moment that changed the
Speaker 2: world as far as color TV goes. It was on
Speaker 2: September twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, and it was the
Speaker 2: episode was two parts, and the first one was an
Speaker 2: Adventure in Color, and it really was a bit of
Speaker 2: an adventure, like it was a bunch of little segments
Speaker 2: that really kind of showed off what you can do
Speaker 2: with color TV and just must have knocked the socks off,
Speaker 2: knocked the coonskin caps off of all the little kids
Speaker 2: sitting at home.
Speaker 1: That's right. And it also featured something called the Spectrum Song,
Speaker 1: which kind of explained what was going on because I
Speaker 1: guess they felt the need to explain color to people
Speaker 1: who had gone around their entire lives seeing real life
Speaker 1: and color. But I guess, like you said, it was
Speaker 1: a pretty whiz bang thing to see the thing, to
Speaker 1: see it on your TV for the first time, so
Speaker 1: they went to great links to probably over explain that.
Speaker 1: And this is also when we got the debut of
Speaker 1: Professor Ludwig von Drake from the Disney Duck World.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was kind of an eccentric inventor. His self
Speaker 2: written bio was He's an eminent psychologist, renowned color expert, etymologist,
Speaker 2: the most sought after a lecturer in the world. He
Speaker 2: is undoubtedly the outstanding genius of the century. So he
Speaker 2: was fairly egotistical, but he was also funny, and he
Speaker 2: became beloved. And this is where he came from that
Speaker 2: first adventure in color. Half and then the second half
Speaker 2: was a theatrical release featuring Donald Duck. Because all of
Speaker 2: these Disney cartoons that we just take for granted today
Speaker 2: used to have to go to the theet to see them.
Speaker 2: But when you went to the theater to see them,
Speaker 2: they were in color. You saw them on TV there
Speaker 2: in black and white. Now you can see him in
Speaker 2: color on TV without leaving the comfort of your home.
Speaker 1: What was their deal with the ducks was that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's just like any other cartoon animal, but
Speaker 1: they really leaned into the ducks.
Speaker 2: It was a great excuse to draw something without pants.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, that makes sense. I never got into any
Speaker 1: I was a little old for like ducktails and all
Speaker 1: that stuff.
Speaker 2: That was a good show.
Speaker 1: So like Donald Duck was my only I guess exposure,
Speaker 1: my only duck exposure. His little feathered Fanny. Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: sorry listeners in England, I know what that means there.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, nice kit to be. To be perfectly honest,
Speaker 2: I was a little old for ducktails too, but I
Speaker 2: still watched it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, we all regress.
Speaker 2: I never progressed, I think.
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, So, just like.
Speaker 2: Disney probably promised RCA and NBC, like they started selling
Speaker 2: color TVs like hotcakes thanks to in large part, the
Speaker 2: Wonderful World of Color, Disney's wonderful World of Color, to
Speaker 2: be exact.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that feels like a great time for
Speaker 1: a break. Huh, yes it does.
Speaker 3: All right, We'll be right back everybody.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So you might think that we're going in chronological order,
Speaker 2: we are not. We're going to go back in time
Speaker 2: a little bit from the debut of color TV, but
Speaker 2: after the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine, two years after,
Speaker 2: and we're going to go to you know, I never
Speaker 2: found out what network this was on, did you. No,
Speaker 2: that's silly.
Speaker 1: Let's just call it ESPN.
Speaker 2: Okay, so on ESPN in nineteen forty one, on July first.
Speaker 2: This is a moment that changed the world. Some people
Speaker 2: who are watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Philly at
Speaker 2: the Philadelphia Phillies essentially saw the first television ad ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was either nine or ten seconds long. It
Speaker 1: depends on the source that you cite, but it was
Speaker 1: pretty short and all it was. And I know we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before because I have seen this before
Speaker 1: and I can't think of any other reason why I
Speaker 1: would have, right, But it is a scene of a
Speaker 1: bull of a clockface just sort of superimposed over a
Speaker 1: map of the United States, and it's had the phrase
Speaker 1: over the top of it like a chiron the world
Speaker 1: runs on Buluva time. And about four thousand people saw
Speaker 1: this ad, and I imagine they were like, what the
Speaker 1: heck is this? Why am I hearing about Bulova?
Speaker 2: And why do I suddenly feel like buying a bowl
Speaker 2: of a watch?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Probably.
Speaker 2: What's super quaint and sweet is that the ad costs
Speaker 2: bull of a nine dollars. That's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Even for the time, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even at the time, that's one hundred and ninety
Speaker 2: five dollars today, So that was quite a sweet deal. Sure,
Speaker 2: And what it did was show like this is a
Speaker 2: we can do this, we can advertise two people. And
Speaker 2: it's not to say that there were just no ads
Speaker 2: on TV before the bulov A ad, but they just
Speaker 2: followed a completely different format, so much so that the
Speaker 2: Bowl of A ad is pretty safely considered among historians
Speaker 2: as the first actual TV commercial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's for a couple of reasons. You did
Speaker 1: mention some other ads, But before that, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, this program is sponsored by whatever, and that
Speaker 1: was just the ad. It wasn't actual TV commercial in
Speaker 1: between content. The first ad, I guess if you count
Speaker 1: that stuff was a nineteen the year TV debuted, really
Speaker 1: and it was a furrier. Man, it seems like it
Speaker 1: would have been from like eighteen thirty, but it was
Speaker 1: a furrier in Boston called ij Fox Furriers who sponsored
Speaker 1: the CBS orchestra. It was a program called the Fox Trapper.
Speaker 1: So that, you know, that's kind of how ads went
Speaker 1: up until forty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was the radio format. It was essentially
Speaker 2: they just took the format that had been pioneered on
Speaker 2: radio and now they were doing it on TV. That's
Speaker 2: not really an ad. If you call that an ad,
Speaker 2: you're just being contrarian, right. Sure, there were still even
Speaker 2: other ads but they were illegal because it wasn't until
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one that the FCC started issuing licenses to
Speaker 2: run commercials on on broadcast networks. But that means that
Speaker 2: the ads before them were illegal. I could not find
Speaker 2: any mention of what these ads were for, but I
Speaker 2: got the impression that they were just experimentation networks kind
Speaker 2: of on the sly figuring out how to do it
Speaker 2: as they went along. So again, Buliva is the first
Speaker 2: actual TV commercial that was legal, and that was also
Speaker 2: produced with the intent, the sole intent to sell a
Speaker 2: particular product on air. That was it. That space of
Speaker 2: air was filled up by an ad. That was the
Speaker 2: first time ever.
Speaker 1: That's right, And I knowe we mentioned this before, but
Speaker 1: for those who aren't familiar with our cannon in the
Speaker 1: old days of stuff, you should know our boss Connel Byrne,
Speaker 1: who commissioned the whole show to begin with and changed
Speaker 1: our lives. Thank you Connell. He came up to us
Speaker 1: at one point after we had been doing it a
Speaker 1: while and said, hey, people are running ads on podcasts
Speaker 1: now and we need to get into this. And we
Speaker 1: were like, no way, no how, We're not going to
Speaker 1: foulop our show. By selling it, and then eventually he said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if we can sell this thing, it'll make
Speaker 1: the company money and on down the road, maybe this
Speaker 1: just becomes your job. I don't know if he said that,
Speaker 1: but the writing was kind of on the wall, and
Speaker 1: maybe this can just become the only thing you do
Speaker 1: here and you won't be writing articles for housetiforks dot
Speaker 1: com anymore. And we went tell us more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here, you make a good case here. Yeah, hey, Chuck,
Speaker 2: we're real quick speaking of our cannon. So for all
Speaker 2: of you listeners out there, it's a little behind the
Speaker 2: scenes peak. Oh yeah, we have like I think, including
Speaker 2: short stuff in the neighborhood of two thousand, three hundred episodes.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really get it across when you say twenty
Speaker 2: three hundred. We have a ton of episodes in our
Speaker 2: back catalog, and we like people write in all the
Speaker 2: time and they're like, you should do this episode. We're like,
Speaker 2: we did like seven years ago, and it's like a
Speaker 2: lot of people just have no idea the episodes we've done.
Speaker 2: So we're trying to like figure out how to get
Speaker 2: it out there better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, that's the reason we mentioned this. We've
Speaker 1: been sort of putting our heads together at iHeartMedia because,
Speaker 1: like you said, a lot of people don't you know,
Speaker 1: I think iTunes serves up about three hundred. But here's
Speaker 1: a little trick. If you're on your podcast player for
Speaker 1: iTunes on your iPhone, if that's how you listen, when
Speaker 1: you scroll down through like the first five episodes, there's
Speaker 1: a little button there that says see all two thousand
Speaker 1: plus episodes, And if you click on that, they're all
Speaker 1: there and you can scroll through. But you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know that. A lot of other
Speaker 1: players don't you know, who knows how many they display,
Speaker 1: But it's a frustration for us, and so it's just
Speaker 1: a gentle reminder that there are literally thousands of these
Speaker 1: episodes out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all also, I think you said on the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app and stuff youshould know. Dot com has the
Speaker 2: master repository and a pretty good search function. And one
Speaker 2: of the ways we figured out like we could probably
Speaker 2: like we could probably do a lot better about mentioning episodes,
Speaker 2: like specifically when they come up in another episode, like
Speaker 2: a new episode. But I feel like we're gonna have
Speaker 2: to do a lot better. Yeah, we normally do, which
Speaker 2: is like, did we do some episode on something related
Speaker 2: to this? Yeah, we gotta figure it out, but we will,
Speaker 2: cause there's just a bunch of great episodes just sitting
Speaker 2: there waiting for people to discover.
Speaker 1: That's right, right, And with that we move on to
Speaker 1: oh wait, yes.
Speaker 2: We have to do the Super Bowl comparison. You have
Speaker 2: to do it. If you talk about the bulovcy we
Speaker 2: really yes.
Speaker 1: All right, you take it away, then I repe stick part.
Speaker 2: So if you write or talk about the Bulova ad,
Speaker 2: it's basically incumbent upon you to compare that ad cost
Speaker 2: the nine dollars cost to what it would have cost
Speaker 2: had they run it on a Super Bowl. And so
Speaker 2: for the twenty twenty five Super Bowl, if Bulova had
Speaker 2: run this, they would have paid two point three five
Speaker 2: million dollars for those ten seconds.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Quite a deal, that's right there. I just kept us
Speaker 2: from being sued.
Speaker 1: Uh well, I don't even think we're even I think
Speaker 1: we're supposed to say the Big Game, aren't we.
Speaker 2: It's no like we're supposed to not buy into that.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I gotcha, all right. Moving on to the
Speaker 1: next one on the list is the that was a
Speaker 1: good segue too, because we can't talk about like our
Speaker 1: old episodes and then say, also, there was a devastating
Speaker 1: tsunami in two thousand and four in the Indian Ocean, right,
Speaker 1: because that happened, and we know if you're of a
Speaker 1: actually you don't have to be much of a certain age.
Speaker 1: But on December twenty six, two thousand and four, that
Speaker 1: was an undersea earthquake about a nine point zero magnitude
Speaker 1: that set off this incredible tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've done episodes on tsunamis and earthquakes, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about all this before. But it was about
Speaker 1: one hundred feet tall, traveling at five hundred miles an hour,
Speaker 1: not much advanced warning, and was one of the most
Speaker 1: devastating tragedies in human history. It killed close to two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand people in fourteen countries. It also
Speaker 1: sparked the biggest rail disaster in history when it completely
Speaker 1: wiped out a train traveling along the coast of Sri Lanka.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned all this because the only positive that
Speaker 1: came out of this was the media's reaction, which sparked
Speaker 1: the incredible amount of philanthropy and aid and giving in
Speaker 1: its aftermath.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the I was reading a study on this.
Speaker 2: It is called media coverage and Charitable Giving after the
Speaker 2: two thousand and four tsunami. It was by Philip H.
Speaker 2: Brown and Justin Minty, and they said, like, the media
Speaker 2: coverage was unprecedented, Like it didn't they the world didn't
Speaker 2: forget about it in like three days. It was twenty
Speaker 2: four hour coverage of this disaster for weeks on end right.
Speaker 2: And because these images were broadcast around the world, and
Speaker 2: because it was so mind bogglingly devastating, people just opened
Speaker 2: up their pockets. I saw ninety nine different countries donated,
Speaker 2: and thirteen of those countries had never donated for a
Speaker 2: natural disaster relief before it got to everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are I think about one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five countries in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which it's kind of like, do better other ninety
Speaker 2: six countries.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I imagine the countries that didn't give have their
Speaker 1: own issues, had their own issues going on.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, no I feel bad, No, don't feel
Speaker 2: so bad.
Speaker 1: But they have done studies. That two thousand and six
Speaker 1: study that you referenced, they said that the Catholic relief
Speaker 1: charities got a million dollars in three days, which would
Speaker 1: turn out to be small beans in the long run,
Speaker 1: but over three days that's quite a haul. Save the
Speaker 1: Children got more than six million dollars in four days.
Speaker 1: The Lutheran World Relief raise more money in a week
Speaker 1: than it does in a year. And the AP found
Speaker 1: that thirty percent of American families donated in the first
Speaker 1: two weeks, and just from the United States though, was
Speaker 1: about one point six billion, and estimates around the world
Speaker 1: were about fourteen billion dollars raised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to kind of go over the power
Speaker 2: of the media, one thing I left out here is
Speaker 2: that that same study found that one extra minute of
Speaker 2: coverage on television equated to an increase in Internet donations
Speaker 2: by six seemed to twenty percent. So like this the impact,
Speaker 2: it's just essentially like a classroom lesson in the impact
Speaker 2: that media can have, the positive impact that media can have.
Speaker 2: And that's I mean, that's that is definitely something to
Speaker 2: TV's credit. Yeah, you want to move on to well,
Speaker 2: move backward to Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, again, we're jumping all over the timeline and we're
Speaker 1: in Vietnam right now because I guess we should talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about pre Vietnam and as far as
Speaker 1: media coverage go, because before that World War Two and
Speaker 1: certainly the Korean War, what you got as far as
Speaker 1: media coverage was highly sort of curated and regulated, government
Speaker 1: mediated film reels. You would get news updates, they would
Speaker 1: play in movie theaters. By the time we got to Vietnam,
Speaker 1: they had, you know, like handheld cameras you could literally
Speaker 1: take to the front lines, and it really changed the
Speaker 1: way war coverage went and as result, the way the
Speaker 1: way people felt about the war. Because World War Two,
Speaker 1: everyone was they were pretty raw, raw, and you got
Speaker 1: these raw, raw films, So morale was big in America.
Speaker 1: You know, they were like, hey, this is great, We're
Speaker 1: fighting the Nazis, right.
Speaker 2: Another huge factor was that by nineteen sixty six, ninety
Speaker 2: three percent of American homes had a TV, and just
Speaker 2: thirteen sixteen years earlier, in nineteen fifty, it was nine percent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so TV was firmly established in the American psyche. You
Speaker 2: remember in wonder years, whenever they sat down and had dinner,
Speaker 2: they always had the TV on showing Vietnam. Yeah coverage. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what it was like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: And so the fact that everybody had TVs, the fact
Speaker 2: that now there was like cameras that you could easily
Speaker 2: allow a journalist to embed with, and the idea that
Speaker 2: the government really shouldn't control propaganda, shouldn't control the news
Speaker 2: like that created this atmosphere where the broadcasters were willing
Speaker 2: to show like really heartrending, unflinching stories. Yeah, what the
Speaker 2: soldiers fighting for the United States were doing in Vietnam
Speaker 2: and what was being done to them, And it really
Speaker 2: shaped America's view of that war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it definitely made the mood and how
Speaker 1: we saw the war like pretty dour. But people, you know,
Speaker 1: going into Vietnam, there were a lot of people already,
Speaker 1: like before even the coverage started that were like, what
Speaker 1: are we doing in Vietnam?
Speaker 2: Again? Right?
Speaker 1: It wasn't like World War Two where where the Nazis
Speaker 1: were trying to you know, take over the world, and
Speaker 1: so you know, this just made everything worse, but you know,
Speaker 1: worse in a positive way because it was showing the
Speaker 1: reality of things. It wasn't government controlled, I'm sure they were,
Speaker 1: you know, just countless meetings behind the scenes and the
Speaker 1: Oval Office where they were like we're getting crushed by
Speaker 1: the reality of this war and how it's being depicted
Speaker 1: in the media. I'm sure they were pretty upset about
Speaker 1: losing control of that narrative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, they definitely were. And later on, I think
Speaker 2: the Iraq War was another considered another television war. Certainly
Speaker 2: the Gulf War the first one was. And the government
Speaker 2: kind of learned from losing control over the narrative in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: but they weren't able to regain control, and so the
Speaker 2: sentiment toward Vietnam and the United States kept getting worse
Speaker 2: and worse, and protests were getting bigger and bigger. There
Speaker 2: was like a very healthy anti war movement. And essentially
Speaker 2: because the public was feeling this way, the public sentiment
Speaker 2: was that way toward Vietnam, and because if you turned
Speaker 2: on the news, the evening national news, you would see
Speaker 2: like terrible coverage that was not flattering at all to
Speaker 2: what the United States was doing in Vietnam, elected official
Speaker 2: basically had no choice but to listen to people. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it definitely led to the earlier, probably an earlier withdrawal
Speaker 2: than the United States may have otherwise taken.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, changed the way that it went
Speaker 1: moving forward, because you know, the writing was on the
Speaker 1: wall at that point for the US government, They're like,
Speaker 1: we can't go back to World War Two. As much
Speaker 1: as they wanted to kind of control that narrative, the
Speaker 1: American people at that point would not have it moving forward.
Speaker 1: So it really kind of changed the whole relationship of
Speaker 1: how any kind of conflict is covered.
Speaker 2: It did. So now they've struck a balance between allowing
Speaker 2: reporters to embed and just relying on those national news
Speaker 2: reporters to disseminate the propaganda, because if you watch embedded coverage,
Speaker 2: for the most part, it is fairly yeah, raw raw,
Speaker 2: even if it's not overtly raw rack. Is that the
Speaker 2: American public's a little more savvy than that. It's still
Speaker 2: nothing like the coverage was of Vietnam from what I understand.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and just the way wars are fought now,
Speaker 1: it not like a front line like you had back then.
Speaker 1: So I remember watching the Gulf War and it was
Speaker 1: just all those like you know, black and white shots
Speaker 1: of bombing things from thousands of feet above, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the beginning of the Iraq War, remember
Speaker 2: it was shock and awe, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it
Speaker 2: was like it was produced essentially for TV, the initial
Speaker 2: attack on Iraq.
Speaker 1: It's so gross to I don't know, I'm not gonna editorialize,
Speaker 1: but to name something like that, like, hey, that sounds
Speaker 1: pretty pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: You know. I think it was either RUMs Fell or
Speaker 2: Cheney who came up with that, And I'm not surprised
Speaker 2: either way.
Speaker 1: For sure. Should we take another break?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 1: Sure, all right, we'll take another break and finish up
Speaker 1: with a couple of more moments that changed TV history
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, we're going to move on
Speaker 1: to another show. But we should mention that the original
Speaker 1: House of Works article included, of course, the moon landing,
Speaker 1: which was a huge TV event, but we covered all
Speaker 1: of that in which episode.
Speaker 2: We have an episode on that. It's called How Going
Speaker 2: to the Moon Works from twenty nineteen, and it was
Speaker 2: a really interesting episode that really covered in depth of
Speaker 2: lunar landing.
Speaker 1: That's right, part of the twenty three hundred episodes plus.
Speaker 2: That's right, But we're.
Speaker 1: Not going to talk about that. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a TV show that we've talked about here and
Speaker 1: there before called Cops. Because Cops is and I know
Speaker 1: I mentioned this in that other episode. Whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it was a show that I used to watch with
Speaker 1: more regularity than I like to admit now I think
Speaker 1: everyone watched it a lot. Well, it was never and
Speaker 1: I'm not excusing it, but it was never like appointment TV.
Speaker 1: In fact, I don't even know when it came on.
Speaker 1: This was just in my younger channel surfing days where
Speaker 1: it was like you're surfing around, Cops was on. I
Speaker 1: would watch Cops and I was never like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: go go. But you know, I've found it probably entertaining
Speaker 1: and amusing, and now that i'm a little older and
Speaker 1: no more of you know, slightly embarrassed that they were
Speaker 1: sort of exploiting many times people who had mental illness
Speaker 1: and who were suffering through poverty and addiction. And so
Speaker 1: I'm not so proud of that. But I'll admit that
Speaker 1: I watched my fair share of Cops.
Speaker 2: I watched it too. So Cops changed the world in
Speaker 2: two ways. And this moment was March eleventh, nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: which is when it debuted on Fox. This is just
Speaker 2: three years after Fox premiered, nine months before The Simpsons
Speaker 2: even premiered, Cops started on Fox, and it helped make
Speaker 2: Fox the fourth network. It was just such a huge
Speaker 2: show right out of the gate. And the two ways
Speaker 2: that it changed the world is one set the groundwork
Speaker 2: for reality TV. Yeah, you can make a pretty good
Speaker 2: case that it was one of the It may be
Speaker 2: the originator of reality TV. There weren't scripts, There wasn't
Speaker 2: any star, There wasn't any narrative or plot lines. It
Speaker 2: was just like, here's some cops and here's a crime
Speaker 2: that they're going to fight. We don't have a script.
Speaker 2: We just generally know what's going on, which ostensibly is
Speaker 2: the basis of any reality show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know what we should do an
Speaker 1: episode on at some point is I can't remember the
Speaker 1: name of it now because it just came to me,
Speaker 1: but I think kind of the first real reality show
Speaker 1: was that one where they followed the American family around
Speaker 1: in the seventies, maybe.
Speaker 2: When a PBS or British or something.
Speaker 1: I think it was PBS, and then they made a
Speaker 1: fictional account of that as a movie not I think
Speaker 1: four or five, six years ago. That was pretty good too.
Speaker 1: I think James Scandalfini was in it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I would have guessed Peter Sarsgard as the dad.
Speaker 1: It was really good though. Anyway, that really kicked off
Speaker 1: reality TV. MTV's Real World didn't come out till ninety two,
Speaker 1: but Cops certainly laid the groundwork for kind of like
Speaker 1: trashy reality TV, you know, right. Yes.
Speaker 2: The other effect that it had on the world was
Speaker 2: it really reinforced unfair racial stereotypes. Yeah, among white Americans
Speaker 2: toward Black Americans, people of color in general in the
Speaker 2: United States. It was an enormous show. It drew like
Speaker 2: eight million viewers each week. That's a crazy amount of people.
Speaker 2: Peaked in the nineties. But even from the first episode,
Speaker 2: civil rights groups were like, whoa wait a second here,
Speaker 2: like a lot of these criminals are black, and this
Speaker 2: is way disproportionate to reality. I thought this was a
Speaker 2: reality show. And the Cops producers, Barber Langley Productions, were like, well,
Speaker 2: it's reality ish, you know, like it's not the actual
Speaker 2: portrayal of reality. It's a skewed toward entertainment version of reality.
Speaker 2: So just settle down. And the civil rights groups are like,
Speaker 2: we're not settling down. That actually makes it even worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the cops loved it because they were
Speaker 1: portrayed as heroes. It was a great recruiting tool for
Speaker 1: police officers. And you know, I guess we have some
Speaker 1: stats from the Marshall Project. They did a analysis in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. Most of the officers on balance were white,
Speaker 1: suspects were more likely to be black or hispanic as
Speaker 1: far as the numbers go. They found that while sexual assault, robbery,
Speaker 1: and murders account for just thirteen percent of all crime
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four, at least it was forty three
Speaker 1: percent of what you saw on cops. I don't remember
Speaker 1: a lot of sexual assault and murder though, Like everything
Speaker 1: I saw on cops were like robberies and drug arrests
Speaker 1: or just you know, dy being drunk out in public, stuff.
Speaker 2: Like that, or dude hiding under a kiddie pool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's probably drunk er on drugs, right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I I remember. I don't remember like more serious crime.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of wondering about that stat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember that either. They also found that
Speaker 2: same study found that the show was far more likely
Speaker 2: to associate black and brown people than whites with violent crime.
Speaker 2: They were black and brown people were forty percent. There
Speaker 2: was a forty percent chance compared to a thirteen percent
Speaker 2: chance for whites. So it was like it wasn't just
Speaker 2: civil rights groups like sensing there's something off about this,
Speaker 2: like people conducted actual studies and found also that a
Speaker 2: viewer of Cops was likelier to maintain the racial stereotype
Speaker 2: that blacks are typically criminals than a person who didn't
Speaker 2: watch Cops. So it had a really large impact. And
Speaker 2: yet despite that, this is ninety four that that study
Speaker 2: came out, it wasn't until twenty thirteen that Fox was
Speaker 2: finally like, okay, fine, fine, yes, okay, well cancel the show.
Speaker 2: We've made our money over twenty five seasons, and thanks
Speaker 2: to civil rights organization Color of Change, Fox dropped it
Speaker 2: and that was the end of Cops forever.
Speaker 1: Right, No, no, no. It was picked up by Spike TV.
Speaker 1: They ran it until twenty twenty. Then after twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: with all the you know, sort of light shined on
Speaker 1: police brutality, they said, you know, maybe it's just not
Speaker 1: so good to run this anymore. But Fox Nation stepped
Speaker 1: up and brought it back in twenty one and it
Speaker 1: is still going in his thirty seventh season. The other
Speaker 1: thing it did was sort of create the the idea
Speaker 1: of the Florida Man because they started I believe they
Speaker 1: debuted in Broward County and shot a lot there over
Speaker 1: the years, and they shot I think they shot more
Speaker 1: than one hundred cities in the end, but a lot
Speaker 1: of their content was shot in Florida and kind of
Speaker 1: sort of reinforced this whole Florida Man thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know that that's skewed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, fair enough, let's finish up.
Speaker 2: Chuck on like a really happy moment. Well, depending on
Speaker 2: which nation you're from, the USSR or the United States.
Speaker 2: If you're from the United States, this is a really
Speaker 2: good high point for your country. In nineteen eighty and
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York,
Speaker 2: to be exact, and there was this one event that
Speaker 2: America was really the unlikely winners in and it was
Speaker 2: men's hockey.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is during the height of the Cold War,
Speaker 1: so the US and the Soviet Union. You know, it
Speaker 1: was just it was all you heard about if you
Speaker 1: were a kid growing up in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: It was such a big deal. The Soviet Union won
Speaker 1: the Olympic gold medals in ice hockey in fifty six
Speaker 1: and then sixty four, sixty eight, seventy two, and seventy six.
Speaker 1: So they ran the Olympics basically from the mid sixties
Speaker 1: to the mid seventies, and then nineteen eighty came along
Speaker 1: and you had a US hockey team and first of all,
Speaker 1: the Soviet hockey team. I believe there was a player
Speaker 1: Fetisov who said later on that was probably the best
Speaker 1: team that the Soviet Union had ever put together. So
Speaker 1: they were the drago and we were a little rocky
Speaker 1: because the American team at the time, this is before
Speaker 1: they allowed pro players to play in the Olympics, there
Speaker 1: was a bunch of college kids and they were I
Speaker 1: mean to call them underdogs was a massive understatement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of the credit goes to the
Speaker 2: coach of the Olympic men's team, Herb Brooks, who was
Speaker 2: the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey coach.
Speaker 1: Kurt Russell. Oh yeah, yeah, he played him in the movie.
Speaker 2: I thought that was Emilio Estevez.
Speaker 1: Well done.
Speaker 2: So the United States did not this, despite how it ended,
Speaker 2: they did not get off on a very good footing.
Speaker 2: There was an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden a
Speaker 2: few days before the nineteen eighty Olympics, same month and everything,
Speaker 2: And they Soviet Union and the States played in this
Speaker 2: exhibition match and the Soviets really you could use the
Speaker 2: word walloped pretty effectively in this case. The Soviets won
Speaker 2: ten to three. So it did not look like the
Speaker 2: United States men's hockey team was going to produce much
Speaker 2: in the Olympics that year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't see a lot of double digit scores
Speaker 1: in hockey if you're not familiar with hockey, you know,
Speaker 1: you see a lot of like two to nothing, three
Speaker 1: to two. Right. Once you score over ten goals, it's
Speaker 1: a big, big deal. So the Americans weren't even supposed
Speaker 1: to advance that much in the Olympics. But they had
Speaker 1: a bunch of comeback wins, had a lot of close
Speaker 1: calls that they won, and they got into the medal
Speaker 1: round and face the Soviets, who up to that point
Speaker 1: in the Olympics had outscored their bonuts fifty one to eleven.
Speaker 1: H So on February twenty second, nineteen eighty and I
Speaker 1: know I've mentioned this before, but I actually watched this
Speaker 1: match as a I guess it wasn't even nine yet.
Speaker 1: It was right before my ninth birthday. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: wasn't even that into hockey, but we were an Olympic family,
Speaker 1: and I remember I have a very distinct memory of
Speaker 1: being in my parents' bedroom for some reason, which I
Speaker 1: usually wasn't much allowed in because it was I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was the seventies. It was like, don't go in
Speaker 1: my bedroom. But we had this little black and white TV.
Speaker 1: I guess my dad was watching other stuff out there
Speaker 1: on the larger console TV, but I remember being in
Speaker 1: their bedroom and watching this match on the little black
Speaker 1: and white TV and knowing, as a little eight year old, like,
Speaker 1: what a huge, huge deal this was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you said something that I think kind of
Speaker 2: applied to a lot of the nation. Hockey was not
Speaker 2: really a thing, nothing like it is now in the
Speaker 2: United States. Like you had to live in a place
Speaker 2: where your rivers froze over every year to like hockey.
Speaker 2: It was a very regional sport. And yet, like you said,
Speaker 2: the entire United States tuned in for this match because
Speaker 2: it was the evil So yeah, and like to our
Speaker 2: younger viewers or listeners, like you don't you can't imagine
Speaker 2: what they told us about the Russians, Like essentially, if
Speaker 2: you were a kid in the seventies, eighties, probably sixties too,
Speaker 2: you were basically taught that if you ever crossed paths
Speaker 2: with anybody from the Soviet Union, they would slash your
Speaker 2: throat just as soon as look at you. Like that
Speaker 2: was essentially what people thought of the Soviet Union at
Speaker 2: and vice versa. So it was the big bad Soviets
Speaker 2: who were just this huge juggernaut of a team, and
Speaker 2: the Americans, the ragtag underdog Americans standing up to these
Speaker 2: these this evil empire. And that's why everybody tuned in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was I remember very just having the distinct
Speaker 1: feeling it was communism versus democracy, really right.
Speaker 2: Right, which is yeah, yeah, which is I think what
Speaker 2: happened in that that Super Bowl with the Falcons versus
Speaker 2: the Patriots. Same thing.
Speaker 1: Oh man, my my darkest day as a Falcons fan.
Speaker 1: Maybe that was rough. It was either that or losing
Speaker 1: to the Jets last week. Oh yeah, oh man, I
Speaker 1: can't talk about it. Okay, very sad season ticket holder here.
Speaker 1: So Americans of course came back and won, and I
Speaker 1: remember our goalie Jim Craig, like skating around after wrapped
Speaker 1: up in the American flag, and that was my first
Speaker 1: like real taste of like understanding what it was like
Speaker 1: to be an American and again a different time where
Speaker 1: you know, it was the Cold War, and it felt
Speaker 1: like a real win for democracy in a weird way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So a lot of people, well I think basically
Speaker 2: everybody calls that game the Miracle on Ice. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: the reason why is because the commentator who was calling
Speaker 2: the hockey game, al Michaels, who as far as I note,
Speaker 2: had only called one hockey game previously at the Sapporo
Speaker 2: Winter Olympics years before. He did a magnificent job. And
Speaker 2: as the time is running out in the third period,
Speaker 2: America staged to come back and scored two goals and
Speaker 2: they were up four to three with several seconds left.
Speaker 2: And remember this Soviet team was good enough that they
Speaker 2: could score a goal and tie within a few seconds.
Speaker 2: So the Americans are just skating around the ice trying
Speaker 2: to keep the puck away from the Russians and al
Speaker 2: Michaels is counting down the seconds and I think with
Speaker 2: about four seconds left, and it became clear that the
Speaker 2: Soviets working to be able to score a goal, he goes,
Speaker 2: do you believe in miracles?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: And if you watch it today you just get just
Speaker 2: amazing chills, just even the last like thirty seconds of
Speaker 2: that game. It's really neat.
Speaker 1: For sure. I wonder if before the game Al Michaels
Speaker 1: was like, it's a puck, al, it's a puck, it's
Speaker 1: a match, it's not a game. And if anyone brings
Speaker 1: up icing, just you explain.
Speaker 2: It, right, just pretend it doesn't exist exactly. So ESPN
Speaker 2: called it the most famous hockey game ever played.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Sports Illustrated ranked it in nineteen ninety nine is the
Speaker 2: top sports moment of the twentieth century. It was a
Speaker 2: big deal. And again I would strongly urge you if
Speaker 2: you don't go why the whole match, watch at least
Speaker 2: a third period, or watch the last couple of minutes
Speaker 2: and several minutes after that where they're, yeah, they're celebrating.
Speaker 2: It's just you can just feel like the whole country
Speaker 2: going crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty incredible. Uh. And if you're ever you know,
Speaker 1: at a dinner party and a group of people and
Speaker 1: they're talking about when the US beat the Soviets for
Speaker 1: the gold medal, you can be the actually guy because
Speaker 1: that was not the gold medal match. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people remember it that way because it was
Speaker 1: such a big deal. But that was an I guess
Speaker 1: a bronze round. Yeah, and the US went on to
Speaker 1: win that gold against Finland yep, two days later. Pretty great,
Speaker 1: Pretty great, everybody.
Speaker 2: So that's it. Those are the only moments that changed
Speaker 2: the world in the history of TV. All the rest
Speaker 2: of them were pretty whole home.
Speaker 1: That's right. You got anything else, I got nothing else, sir.
Speaker 2: All right. I think this was a pretty good start
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty six, don't you.
Speaker 1: I think it's great.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck said, great. That means it's time for listener now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, Let's let's start off the year
Speaker 1: without a listener mail and just make a push to
Speaker 1: remind everyone that we're still kicking off pretty soon in
Speaker 1: a few months, it'll be or eighteen in April. And
Speaker 1: we always are still looking to grow the show, and
Speaker 1: we don't do it much, but if you could rate
Speaker 1: and review the show, that means a lot. If you
Speaker 1: could tell friends and family, like, hey, there's this podcast
Speaker 1: been around forever and we like it. We may or
Speaker 1: may not be Golden Globe nominated. We don't know at
Speaker 1: this point because we're going to find out next Monday,
Speaker 1: but yeah, go out and spread the spread the good word.
Speaker 1: And we look forward to seeing everybody on the road
Speaker 1: this year in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to be on the road this month
Speaker 2: in January, also in April, and then Canada this summer.
Speaker 2: So you can get tickets and info at stuff youshould
Speaker 2: Know dot com. And if you want to say Happy
Speaker 2: New Year or whatever, you can send us an email.
Speaker 2: We love that you can send it to stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
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