61 years ago today, The Beatles were first reported on in America:
"Monday November 18, 1963, Huntley-Brinkley featured a report by Edwin Newman on the Beatles phenomenon. It was the Beatles' first appearance on American television and the piece was seen by millions of people across the country ... the biggest single audience for the Beatles anywhere outside England up to that moment. An audio recording somehow did survive, and was recently discovered in the Library of Congress."
Of course, we know what happened a few days later - they were announced to America by Mike Wallace on November 22 ...2 hours before the JFK assassination, therein leaving the scoop to be forgotten completely.
Thankfully, Walter Cronkite re-aired the report a few weeks later:
On December 10, 1963, CBS News Director/anchorman Walter Cronkite recalled a story prepared by the network’s London bureau on the curious response a Liverpool rock ’n’ roll band was generating among British youngsters. The five-minute story had originally run on the CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace on November 22, 1963, just hours before President Kennedy was assassinated. The story had been scheduled to run that evening, but with the day’s tragic events, the evening news was entirely devoted to the assassination. Being a few weeks after the tragedy in Dallas, Mr. Cronkite thought the country was ready for some light news. He decided to end his broadcast on the December 10 CBS Evening News with the feature story on the Beatles, which contained an interview with group, footage of their fan club and a performance of She Loves You.
...which led to Beatlemania kicking off in America, partly due to a Maryland teenager hearing Walter Cronkite's report that night.
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