On this sleepy Saturday morning in 1971, an AP and UPI wire story transmits to radio and television stations nationwide:
“THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION DIRECTED BY THE PRESIDENT. NORMAL BROADCASTING WILL CEASE IMMEDIATELY.”
And for the next panicked 40 minutes, many stations do just that. The false alert triggers fears of an impending nuclear attack, and flashbacks to Pearl Harbor or the assassination of JFK.
“[I] thought, ‘My God, it’s December seventh all over again!’” says the manager of an Indiana television station that goes dark for 22 minutes.
Turns out it’s all due to human error, a plain old tape mix-up. Not tape as in videotape, but in punched paper strips transmitted on Teletype machines. Wrong tape, wrong message, big mistake. From the massive concrete bunker warning center deep in the mountains of Colorado, the 15-year veteran employee responsible later says, “I can’t imagine how the hell I did it.”
To which hitherto unknown but now egg-faced director Louis Smoyer later adds, “It damn sure won’t happen again.”
September 8, 1966 Heck of a Trek
“Gallivanting around the cosmos is a game for the young.” – William Shatner in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
A phenomenon today, Paramount's Star Trek was anything but when it debuted on this night on NBC. In its first season it ranked a mediocre #52, and was regularly beaten by competitors like Bewitched and My Three Sons. In successive years the network shifted its date and timeslot but audiences fell even further, and the show was axed at the end of its third season. But diehard trekkies kept the flame alive. Paramount tried an animated series for a couple years until its first feature film in 1979, and overwhelming response triggered a steady stream of movies and syndicated series ever since.
On this sleepy Saturday morning in 1971, an AP and UPI wire story transmits to radio and television stations nationwide:
“THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION DIRECTED BY THE PRESIDENT. NORMAL BROADCASTING WILL CEASE IMMEDIATELY.”
And for the next panicked 40 minutes, many stations do just that. The false alert triggers fears of an impending nuclear attack, and flashbacks to Pearl Harbor or the assassination of…