January 1, 2026 • 45 mins
Whatever you think of TV, you have to admit it has shaped the world (maybe more than the internet, according to Josh). There have been moments here or there in TV history where the world took a new course and we go over some of them in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is the first
episode of the two double two six.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I thought there was already another episode out.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yes, this is the first one, Chuck. I think this
comes out on one to one.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Really twenty six, okay, pretty sure. Yeah, I thought we
had already crept into twenty six. But that's no matter
because it's still two five for us.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, there's some weird time stuff that's going on. We're
essentially straddling two years right now. And uh, I'm wearing
a silver spacesuit because of that.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
All that to say, if we're a little loose is
because this is our last recording session of the year,
and so we're closing this out or opening up the
next year with a good old fashioned top ten that's
not a ten, like just like the old days.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
That's right, we're finishing out twenty twenty five and stuff
you should know fashion.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Right, Yeah, look just like we did in probably twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, probably, Chuck. If you'll allow me to begin.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Boy, it's just a classic old school opening, Chuck, do
you have a TV.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Have you ever seen TV?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I knew it was coming. Yes, it was either that.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Or Webster's defined TV right, right, one of the two.
I've seen TV too. Not only have I seen ATV,
I've watched what's broadcast on TV as well multiple times
throughout my life.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Same.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
It's funny we chose this moments that changed the world,
TV moments that changed the world. And as you're kind
of researching this, she realized, like, for better or worse man,
TV is like it may modern culture more than anything
else I think in the entire world. Would I would
argue more than the internet? Ooh interesting, Yeah, I'm just
(02:09):
gonna say it.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
All right, I'm not going to argue. I'm a not
an arguing mood.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, people who disagree, just follow us on this journey
into TV moments that changed the world, and maybe your
your opinion will be changed either way. I don't fault you,
all right, Great, So let's start at the beginning, when,
like the day that TV really kicked off in earnest,
there was a day that this happened. It was April thirtieth,
nineteen thirty nine, in Flushing, New York, on Long Island.
(02:39):
And if you are familiar with that date in that area,
you may know that this was the nineteen thirty nine
World's Fair, and this is where TV got its start,
where it was really kind of unveiled to the public
at large.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
That's right, not the nineteen forty World's Fair. HowStuffWorks dot
com because there was not one.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
No.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, so, you know, TV had been around for a bit,
but it wasn't super widespread at this point. I feel
like we talked about this a lot lately for some reason.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yes, stuff is just really clicking these days. I'm not
sure why.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It really is. But they had broadcast limitations. They could
only broadcast, you know, for a limited number of miles,
like out a limited number of miles. But by the
time that World's Fare came along, they were like, hey,
this is a chance to make a really big splash.
The RCA Corporation, the Radio Corporation of America, which also
then led the way in TVs. They were putting out
(03:32):
some pretty good televisions at the point, but they were
luxury items, and again they didn't have like the most
regular broadcasting going on. But they knew that this World's
Fare was a chance to make a super big splash.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Right, So, yeah, this is where they were going to
start selling TVs to the public. The problem is is,
you can have all the TVs in the world, but
if you don't have anything to watch on it, good point,
what are you going to do? Nothing? You're going to
sit there like a jackass and look at a blank TV.
So Luckily thought of this and they founded NBC, the
National Broadcasting Company, to start broadcasting stuff. So they brought
(04:08):
the whole thing together, the broadcasting and the TVs themselves,
and they debuted it on April thirtieth, nineteen thirty nine,
when they I think created the world's first live television
broadcast of Franklin Roosevelt kicking off the nineteen thirty nine
World's Fair.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
That's right, And we did mention this one in another episode.
But he was, you know, sort of the the first president,
daddy of TV, granddaddy of TV. And like you said,
he opened it up there and you know, NBC had
gotten there and they had their you know, you know,
now antiquated TV technology all lined up. It was just
(04:46):
pretty whiz bang at the time. Sure, and they sent
signals through these mobile broadcasting trucks, which I mean, it's
pretty amazing. That in the nineteen thirties they had the
technology to even accomplish that, right, So it's pretty impressive
still to this day, and broadcasts that signal out to
about two thousand viewers, which seemed like a big number
(05:09):
at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I imagine I'm still impressed with news fans. Oh yeah,
sure of the time, which is our time.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I'm impressed with news fans today, That's.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What I mean. Oh, okay, I didn't get it across
very well.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, So one thing I saw I was looking up
pictures of this nineteen thirty nine Worlds Fair, the RCA pavilion.
Apparently they built one of their televisions within transparent I
guess class or something like that, maybe plastic, so you
could see the internal working part so that people wouldn't
think it was just some sort of trick.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh wow, interesting, that's how new it was. Yeah. Oddly,
since we're recording our Christmas episode, I feel like this
pause before the next one is going to include like
jingle bells and things, right, But it's not going to.
We're just simply moving on to another one, which is
Disney's Wonderful World of Color. I'm sure you like I
(06:04):
grew up watching I guess by the time we were
watching it in the seventies, and or me in the seventies,
and you likely in the eighties, it was called The
Wonderful World of Disney.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I watched Walt Disney Presents, I think, is what it
was for me.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Oh okay, so I guess, yeah, since I'm only a
year older than you, I was watching The Wonderful World
of Disney. Because this show had some title changes. But
the reason we're talking about this at all, it's because
of the advent of color television, which Walt Disney himself
really got behind and was like, Hey, I want to
be the dude that kind of brings this to the masses.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Right, because just like how you could have TVs but
nothing to broadcast, you could have color TVs and if
you weren't broadcasting in color, what's the point. And again,
this was an issue for RCA, and by then, of
course they had NBC, and NBC was rolling pretty well. Yeah,
but Walt Disney's anthology series had started years before and
it was on ABC. NBC wasn't broadcasting in color. So
(07:02):
Walt Disney personally held a meeting with NBC and said,
we want to do this, apparently saying he said that.
He said, Bellas, I want this deal. If necessary, I'll
stand on my head in Macy's window.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, and all the executives said, you don't have to
do that. It's a pretty good idea, So why are
you being weird?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, but he was just that enthusiastic about the whole thing.
But he personally went and pitched the idea of the NBC.
And the reason why again is NBC was the first
network to broadcast in color, and so Walt Disney really
kind of pushed this through because NBC would have broadcasting
color either way, but Walt Disney wanted to do it
in like high style.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, for sure. And this is a TV show that
launched in nineteen fifty four and ran for thirty four seasons,
obviously at first in black and white. And like I
mentioned earlier, you know the name changes. I guess they
had one, you know, between My Birth and your Birth,
because it was initially called Disney's Wonderful and then Magical
World of Disney. Yeah, and then when the color debuted,
(08:05):
he was like, we really want to be sort of
obvious with this, so let's call it Disney's wonderful World
of Color. Yeah, but we still haven't even said what
this was. I mean you mentioned anthology series. It was.
It was like a variety show essentially. They had cartoons
and stuff. I remember when I was a kid that
the Davy Crockett TV Show, and it says in this
(08:27):
house Stuff Works article it launched the coonskin cap craze.
And I have a picture of little five year old
me with a musket and a leather vest and a
coonskin cap on my head. So I was into that.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I had one too, but I don't have a picture
of it, so I can't prove it.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I can probably dig that up and throw it up
on the Instagram maybe to align with this, so I'll
try and find that.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So they were also like a lot of documentary programming, right,
and you would think like, okay, hard hitting frontline esque documentaries. No,
not at all. It meant that they would go and
film stuff under various themes at Disneyland. They were essentially
big ads for Disneyland. He used that big time, And
I mean they were well produced and interesting, sure, but
(09:15):
they really went to that well quite a bit in
every episode, not in the first episode though, instead the
first episode, and this is the moment that changed the
world as far as color TV goes. It was on
September twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, and it was the
episode was two parts, and the first one was an
Adventure in Color, and it really was a bit of
(09:37):
an adventure, like it was a bunch of little segments
that really kind of showed off what you can do
with color TV and just must have knocked the socks off,
knocked the coonskin caps off of all the little kids
sitting at home.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
That's right. And it also featured something called the Spectrum Song,
which kind of explained what was going on because I
guess they felt the need to explain color to people
who had gone around their entire lives seeing real life
and color. But I guess, like you said, it was
a pretty whiz bang thing to see the thing, to
see it on your TV for the first time, so
(10:10):
they went to great links to probably over explain that.
And this is also when we got the debut of
Professor Ludwig von Drake from the Disney Duck World.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, he was kind of an eccentric inventor. His self
written bio was He's an eminent psychologist, renowned color expert, etymologist,
the most sought after a lecturer in the world. He
is undoubtedly the outstanding genius of the century. So he
was fairly egotistical, but he was also funny, and he
(10:45):
became beloved. And this is where he came from that
first adventure in color. Half and then the second half
was a theatrical release featuring Donald Duck. Because all of
these Disney cartoons that we just take for granted today
used to have to go to the theet to see them.
But when you went to the theater to see them,
they were in color. You saw them on TV there
in black and white. Now you can see him in
(11:07):
color on TV without leaving the comfort of your home.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What was their deal with the ducks was that? I mean,
I guess it's just like any other cartoon animal, but
they really leaned into the ducks.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It was a great excuse to draw something without pants.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Ah, okay, that makes sense. I never got into any
I was a little old for like ducktails and all
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
That was a good show.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
So like Donald Duck was my only I guess exposure,
my only duck exposure. His little feathered Fanny. Oh sorry,
sorry listeners in England, I know what that means there.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's right. Yeah, nice kit to be. To be perfectly honest,
I was a little old for ducktails too, but I
still watched it.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah. Well, you know, we all regress.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I never progressed, I think.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Oh, come on, So, just like.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Disney probably promised RCA and NBC, like they started selling
color TVs like hotcakes thanks to in large part, the
Wonderful World of Color, Disney's wonderful World of Color, to
be exact.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
That's right, And that feels like a great time for
a break. Huh, yes it does.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
All right, We'll be right back everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
All right.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So you might think that we're going in chronological order,
we are not. We're going to go back in time
a little bit from the debut of color TV, but
after the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine, two years after,
and we're going to go to you know, I never
found out what network this was on, did you. No,
(13:01):
that's silly.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Let's just call it ESPN.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Okay, so on ESPN in nineteen forty one, on July first.
This is a moment that changed the world. Some people
who are watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Philly at
the Philadelphia Phillies essentially saw the first television ad ever.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, it was either nine or ten seconds long. It
depends on the source that you cite, but it was
pretty short and all it was. And I know we've
talked about this before because I have seen this before
and I can't think of any other reason why I
would have, right, But it is a scene of a
bull of a clockface just sort of superimposed over a
map of the United States, and it's had the phrase
(13:42):
over the top of it like a chiron the world
runs on Buluva time. And about four thousand people saw
this ad, and I imagine they were like, what the
heck is this? Why am I hearing about Bulova?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And why do I suddenly feel like buying a bowl
of a watch?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah? Probably.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
What's super quaint and sweet is that the ad costs
bull of a nine dollars. That's the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Even for the time, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, even at the time, that's one hundred and ninety
five dollars today, So that was quite a sweet deal. Sure,
And what it did was show like this is a
we can do this, we can advertise two people. And
it's not to say that there were just no ads
on TV before the bulov A ad, but they just
followed a completely different format, so much so that the
(14:32):
Bowl of A ad is pretty safely considered among historians
as the first actual TV commercial.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, and that's for a couple of reasons. You did
mention some other ads, But before that, it was like,
you know, this program is sponsored by whatever, and that
was just the ad. It wasn't actual TV commercial in
between content. The first ad, I guess if you count
that stuff was a nineteen the year TV debuted, really
(15:02):
and it was a furrier. Man, it seems like it
would have been from like eighteen thirty, but it was
a furrier in Boston called ij Fox Furriers who sponsored
the CBS orchestra. It was a program called the Fox Trapper.
So that, you know, that's kind of how ads went
up until forty one.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and that was the radio format. It was essentially
they just took the format that had been pioneered on
radio and now they were doing it on TV. That's
not really an ad. If you call that an ad,
you're just being contrarian, right. Sure, there were still even
other ads but they were illegal because it wasn't until
nineteen forty one that the FCC started issuing licenses to
run commercials on on broadcast networks. But that means that
(15:44):
the ads before them were illegal. I could not find
any mention of what these ads were for, but I
got the impression that they were just experimentation networks kind
of on the sly figuring out how to do it
as they went along. So again, Buliva is the first
actual TV commercial that was legal, and that was also
(16:05):
produced with the intent, the sole intent to sell a
particular product on air. That was it. That space of
air was filled up by an ad. That was the
first time ever.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
That's right, And I knowe we mentioned this before, but
for those who aren't familiar with our cannon in the
old days of stuff, you should know our boss Connel Byrne,
who commissioned the whole show to begin with and changed
our lives. Thank you Connell. He came up to us
at one point after we had been doing it a
while and said, hey, people are running ads on podcasts
(16:39):
now and we need to get into this. And we
were like, no way, no how, We're not going to
foulop our show. By selling it, and then eventually he said, well,
you know, if we can sell this thing, it'll make
the company money and on down the road, maybe this
just becomes your job. I don't know if he said that,
but the writing was kind of on the wall, and
maybe this can just become the only thing you do
(17:00):
here and you won't be writing articles for housetiforks dot
com anymore. And we went tell us more.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, here, you make a good case here. Yeah, hey, Chuck,
we're real quick speaking of our cannon. So for all
of you listeners out there, it's a little behind the
scenes peak. Oh yeah, we have like I think, including
short stuff in the neighborhood of two thousand, three hundred episodes.
It doesn't really get it across when you say twenty
three hundred. We have a ton of episodes in our
(17:28):
back catalog, and we like people write in all the
time and they're like, you should do this episode. We're like,
we did like seven years ago, and it's like a
lot of people just have no idea the episodes we've done.
So we're trying to like figure out how to get
it out there better.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, for sure, that's the reason we mentioned this. We've
been sort of putting our heads together at iHeartMedia because,
like you said, a lot of people don't you know,
I think iTunes serves up about three hundred. But here's
a little trick. If you're on your podcast player for
iTunes on your iPhone, if that's how you listen, when
you scroll down through like the first five episodes, there's
(18:04):
a little button there that says see all two thousand
plus episodes, And if you click on that, they're all
there and you can scroll through. But you know, a
lot of people don't know that. A lot of other
players don't you know, who knows how many they display,
But it's a frustration for us, and so it's just
a gentle reminder that there are literally thousands of these
episodes out there.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, they're all also, I think you said on the
iHeartRadio app and stuff youshould know. Dot com has the
master repository and a pretty good search function. And one
of the ways we figured out like we could probably
like we could probably do a lot better about mentioning episodes,
like specifically when they come up in another episode, like
a new episode. But I feel like we're gonna have
to do a lot better. Yeah, we normally do, which
(18:47):
is like, did we do some episode on something related
to this? Yeah, we gotta figure it out, but we will,
cause there's just a bunch of great episodes just sitting
there waiting for people to discover.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
That's right, right, And with that we move on to
oh wait, yes.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
We have to do the Super Bowl comparison. You have
to do it. If you talk about the bulovcy we
really yes.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
All right, you take it away, then I repe stick part.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So if you write or talk about the Bulova ad,
it's basically incumbent upon you to compare that ad cost
the nine dollars cost to what it would have cost
had they run it on a Super Bowl. And so
for the twenty twenty five Super Bowl, if Bulova had
run this, they would have paid two point three five
million dollars for those ten seconds.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Quite a deal, that's right there. I just kept us
from being sued.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Uh well, I don't even think we're even I think
we're supposed to say the Big Game, aren't we.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It's no like we're supposed to not buy into that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Oh okay, I gotcha, all right. Moving on to the
next one on the list is the that was a
good segue too, because we can't talk about like our
old episodes and then say, also, there was a devastating
tsunami in two thousand and four in the Indian Ocean, right,
because that happened, and we know if you're of a
actually you don't have to be much of a certain age.
But on December twenty six, two thousand and four, that
(20:07):
was an undersea earthquake about a nine point zero magnitude
that set off this incredible tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
I mean, we've done episodes on tsunamis and earthquakes, and
we've talked about all this before. But it was about
one hundred feet tall, traveling at five hundred miles an hour,
not much advanced warning, and was one of the most
(20:30):
devastating tragedies in human history. It killed close to two
hundred and thirty thousand people in fourteen countries. It also
sparked the biggest rail disaster in history when it completely
wiped out a train traveling along the coast of Sri Lanka.
And we mentioned all this because the only positive that
(20:51):
came out of this was the media's reaction, which sparked
the incredible amount of philanthropy and aid and giving in
its aftermath.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah, because the I was reading a study on this.
It is called media coverage and Charitable Giving after the
two thousand and four tsunami. It was by Philip H.
Brown and Justin Minty, and they said, like, the media
coverage was unprecedented, Like it didn't they the world didn't
forget about it in like three days. It was twenty
(21:22):
four hour coverage of this disaster for weeks on end right.
And because these images were broadcast around the world, and
because it was so mind bogglingly devastating, people just opened
up their pockets. I saw ninety nine different countries donated,
and thirteen of those countries had never donated for a
(21:45):
natural disaster relief before it got to everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, and there are I think about one hundred and
ninety five countries in the world.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, which it's kind of like, do better other ninety
six countries.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah. I imagine the countries that didn't give have their
own issues, had their own issues going on.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
You know, Well, no I feel bad, No, don't feel
so bad.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
But they have done studies. That two thousand and six
study that you referenced, they said that the Catholic relief
charities got a million dollars in three days, which would
turn out to be small beans in the long run,
but over three days that's quite a haul. Save the
Children got more than six million dollars in four days.
The Lutheran World Relief raise more money in a week
(22:30):
than it does in a year. And the AP found
that thirty percent of American families donated in the first
two weeks, and just from the United States though, was
about one point six billion, and estimates around the world
were about fourteen billion dollars raised.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, and just to kind of go over the power
of the media, one thing I left out here is
that that same study found that one extra minute of
coverage on television equated to an increase in Internet donations
by six seemed to twenty percent. So like this the impact,
it's just essentially like a classroom lesson in the impact
(23:08):
that media can have, the positive impact that media can have.
And that's I mean, that's that is definitely something to
TV's credit. Yeah, you want to move on to well,
move backward to Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, again, we're jumping all over the timeline and we're
in Vietnam right now because I guess we should talk
a little bit about pre Vietnam and as far as
media coverage go, because before that World War Two and
certainly the Korean War, what you got as far as
media coverage was highly sort of curated and regulated, government
(23:43):
mediated film reels. You would get news updates, they would
play in movie theaters. By the time we got to Vietnam,
they had, you know, like handheld cameras you could literally
take to the front lines, and it really changed the
way war coverage went and as result, the way the
way people felt about the war. Because World War Two,
(24:04):
everyone was they were pretty raw, raw, and you got
these raw, raw films, So morale was big in America.
You know, they were like, hey, this is great, We're
fighting the Nazis, right.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Another huge factor was that by nineteen sixty six, ninety
three percent of American homes had a TV, and just
thirteen sixteen years earlier, in nineteen fifty, it was nine percent. Yeah,
so TV was firmly established in the American psyche. You
remember in wonder years, whenever they sat down and had dinner,
(24:35):
they always had the TV on showing Vietnam. Yeah coverage. Yeah,
that's what it was like.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And so the fact that everybody had TVs, the fact
that now there was like cameras that you could easily
allow a journalist to embed with, and the idea that
the government really shouldn't control propaganda, shouldn't control the news
like that created this atmosphere where the broadcasters were willing
(25:05):
to show like really heartrending, unflinching stories. Yeah, what the
soldiers fighting for the United States were doing in Vietnam
and what was being done to them, And it really
shaped America's view of that war.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah, I mean it definitely made the mood and how
we saw the war like pretty dour. But people, you know,
going into Vietnam, there were a lot of people already,
like before even the coverage started that were like, what
are we doing in Vietnam?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Again? Right?
Speaker 1 (25:37):
It wasn't like World War Two where where the Nazis
were trying to you know, take over the world, and
so you know, this just made everything worse, but you know,
worse in a positive way because it was showing the
reality of things. It wasn't government controlled, I'm sure they were,
you know, just countless meetings behind the scenes and the
(25:58):
Oval Office where they were like we're getting crushed by
the reality of this war and how it's being depicted
in the media. I'm sure they were pretty upset about
losing control of that narrative.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, No, they definitely were. And later on, I think
the Iraq War was another considered another television war. Certainly
the Gulf War the first one was. And the government
kind of learned from losing control over the narrative in Vietnam,
but they weren't able to regain control, and so the
(26:30):
sentiment toward Vietnam and the United States kept getting worse
and worse, and protests were getting bigger and bigger. There
was like a very healthy anti war movement. And essentially
because the public was feeling this way, the public sentiment
was that way toward Vietnam, and because if you turned
on the news, the evening national news, you would see
(26:53):
like terrible coverage that was not flattering at all to
what the United States was doing in Vietnam, elected official
basically had no choice but to listen to people. And yeah,
it definitely led to the earlier, probably an earlier withdrawal
than the United States may have otherwise taken.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, and you know, changed the way that it went
moving forward, because you know, the writing was on the
wall at that point for the US government, They're like,
we can't go back to World War Two. As much
as they wanted to kind of control that narrative, the
American people at that point would not have it moving forward.
So it really kind of changed the whole relationship of
how any kind of conflict is covered.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
It did. So now they've struck a balance between allowing
reporters to embed and just relying on those national news
reporters to disseminate the propaganda, because if you watch embedded coverage,
for the most part, it is fairly yeah, raw raw,
even if it's not overtly raw rack. Is that the
American public's a little more savvy than that. It's still
(27:53):
nothing like the coverage was of Vietnam from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Well, yeah, and just the way wars are fought now,
it not like a front line like you had back then.
So I remember watching the Gulf War and it was
just all those like you know, black and white shots
of bombing things from thousands of feet above, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, and then the beginning of the Iraq War, remember
it was shock and awe, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it
was like it was produced essentially for TV, the initial
attack on Iraq.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
It's so gross to I don't know, I'm not gonna editorialize,
but to name something like that, like, hey, that sounds
pretty pretty awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
You know. I think it was either RUMs Fell or
Cheney who came up with that, And I'm not surprised
either way.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
For sure. Should we take another break?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Oh gosh, I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Sure, all right, we'll take another break and finish up
with a couple of more moments that changed TV history
right after this. All right, we're going to move on
(29:12):
to another show. But we should mention that the original
House of Works article included, of course, the moon landing,
which was a huge TV event, but we covered all
of that in which episode.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We have an episode on that. It's called How Going
to the Moon Works from twenty nineteen, and it was
a really interesting episode that really covered in depth of
lunar landing.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
That's right, part of the twenty three hundred episodes plus.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
That's right, But we're.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Not going to talk about that. We're going to talk
about a TV show that we've talked about here and
there before called Cops. Because Cops is and I know
I mentioned this in that other episode. Whatever it was,
it was a show that I used to watch with
more regularity than I like to admit now I think
everyone watched it a lot. Well, it was never and
I'm not excusing it, but it was never like appointment TV.
(29:57):
In fact, I don't even know when it came on.
This was just in my younger channel surfing days where
it was like you're surfing around, Cops was on. I
would watch Cops and I was never like yeah, yeah,
go go. But you know, I've found it probably entertaining
and amusing, and now that i'm a little older and
no more of you know, slightly embarrassed that they were
(30:19):
sort of exploiting many times people who had mental illness
and who were suffering through poverty and addiction. And so
I'm not so proud of that. But I'll admit that
I watched my fair share of Cops.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I watched it too. So Cops changed the world in
two ways. And this moment was March eleventh, nineteen eighty nine,
which is when it debuted on Fox. This is just
three years after Fox premiered, nine months before The Simpsons
even premiered, Cops started on Fox, and it helped make
Fox the fourth network. It was just such a huge
(30:53):
show right out of the gate. And the two ways
that it changed the world is one set the groundwork
for reality TV. Yeah, you can make a pretty good
case that it was one of the It may be
the originator of reality TV. There weren't scripts, There wasn't
any star, There wasn't any narrative or plot lines. It
(31:15):
was just like, here's some cops and here's a crime
that they're going to fight. We don't have a script.
We just generally know what's going on, which ostensibly is
the basis of any reality show.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, I think you know what we should do an
episode on at some point is I can't remember the
name of it now because it just came to me,
but I think kind of the first real reality show
was that one where they followed the American family around
in the seventies, maybe.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
When a PBS or British or something.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I think it was PBS, and then they made a
fictional account of that as a movie not I think
four or five, six years ago. That was pretty good too.
I think James Scandalfini was in it.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Okay, I would have guessed Peter Sarsgard as the dad.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
It was really good though. Anyway, that really kicked off
reality TV. MTV's Real World didn't come out till ninety two,
but Cops certainly laid the groundwork for kind of like
trashy reality TV, you know, right. Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The other effect that it had on the world was
it really reinforced unfair racial stereotypes. Yeah, among white Americans
toward Black Americans, people of color in general in the
United States. It was an enormous show. It drew like
eight million viewers each week. That's a crazy amount of people.
(32:30):
Peaked in the nineties. But even from the first episode,
civil rights groups were like, whoa wait a second here,
like a lot of these criminals are black, and this
is way disproportionate to reality. I thought this was a
reality show. And the Cops producers, Barber Langley Productions, were like, well,
(32:51):
it's reality ish, you know, like it's not the actual
portrayal of reality. It's a skewed toward entertainment version of reality.
So just settle down. And the civil rights groups are like,
we're not settling down. That actually makes it even worse.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah, I mean, the cops loved it because they were
portrayed as heroes. It was a great recruiting tool for
police officers. And you know, I guess we have some
stats from the Marshall Project. They did a analysis in
nineteen ninety four. Most of the officers on balance were white,
(33:24):
suspects were more likely to be black or hispanic as
far as the numbers go. They found that while sexual assault, robbery,
and murders account for just thirteen percent of all crime
in nineteen ninety four, at least it was forty three
percent of what you saw on cops. I don't remember
a lot of sexual assault and murder though, Like everything
I saw on cops were like robberies and drug arrests
(33:48):
or just you know, dy being drunk out in public, stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Like that, or dude hiding under a kiddie pool.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, he's probably drunk er on drugs, right, Yeah, that's
what I I remember. I don't remember like more serious crime.
So I was kind of wondering about that stat.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, I don't remember that either. They also found that
same study found that the show was far more likely
to associate black and brown people than whites with violent crime.
They were black and brown people were forty percent. There
was a forty percent chance compared to a thirteen percent
chance for whites. So it was like it wasn't just
(34:26):
civil rights groups like sensing there's something off about this,
like people conducted actual studies and found also that a
viewer of Cops was likelier to maintain the racial stereotype
that blacks are typically criminals than a person who didn't
watch Cops. So it had a really large impact. And
yet despite that, this is ninety four that that study
(34:48):
came out, it wasn't until twenty thirteen that Fox was
finally like, okay, fine, fine, yes, okay, well cancel the show.
We've made our money over twenty five seasons, and thanks
to civil rights organization Color of Change, Fox dropped it
and that was the end of Cops forever.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Right, No, no, no. It was picked up by Spike TV.
They ran it until twenty twenty. Then after twenty twenty,
with all the you know, sort of light shined on
police brutality, they said, you know, maybe it's just not
so good to run this anymore. But Fox Nation stepped
up and brought it back in twenty one and it
is still going in his thirty seventh season. The other
(35:26):
thing it did was sort of create the the idea
of the Florida Man because they started I believe they
debuted in Broward County and shot a lot there over
the years, and they shot I think they shot more
than one hundred cities in the end, but a lot
of their content was shot in Florida and kind of
sort of reinforced this whole Florida Man thing.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah. I don't know that that's skewed.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Yeah, all right, fair enough, let's finish up.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Chuck on like a really happy moment. Well, depending on
which nation you're from, the USSR or the United States.
If you're from the United States, this is a really
good high point for your country. In nineteen eighty and
the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York,
to be exact, and there was this one event that
(36:17):
America was really the unlikely winners in and it was
men's hockey.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
That's right. This is during the height of the Cold War,
so the US and the Soviet Union. You know, it
was just it was all you heard about if you
were a kid growing up in the seventies and eighties.
It was such a big deal. The Soviet Union won
the Olympic gold medals in ice hockey in fifty six
and then sixty four, sixty eight, seventy two, and seventy six.
(36:44):
So they ran the Olympics basically from the mid sixties
to the mid seventies, and then nineteen eighty came along
and you had a US hockey team and first of all,
the Soviet hockey team. I believe there was a player
Fetisov who said later on that was probably the best
team that the Soviet Union had ever put together. So
(37:07):
they were the drago and we were a little rocky
because the American team at the time, this is before
they allowed pro players to play in the Olympics, there
was a bunch of college kids and they were I
mean to call them underdogs was a massive understatement.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, And a lot of the credit goes to the
coach of the Olympic men's team, Herb Brooks, who was
the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey coach.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Kurt Russell. Oh yeah, yeah, he played him in the movie.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I thought that was Emilio Estevez.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Well done.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So the United States did not this, despite how it ended,
they did not get off on a very good footing.
There was an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden a
few days before the nineteen eighty Olympics, same month and everything,
And they Soviet Union and the States played in this
(38:01):
exhibition match and the Soviets really you could use the
word walloped pretty effectively in this case. The Soviets won
ten to three. So it did not look like the
United States men's hockey team was going to produce much
in the Olympics that year.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, you don't see a lot of double digit scores
in hockey if you're not familiar with hockey, you know,
you see a lot of like two to nothing, three
to two. Right. Once you score over ten goals, it's
a big, big deal. So the Americans weren't even supposed
to advance that much in the Olympics. But they had
a bunch of comeback wins, had a lot of close
calls that they won, and they got into the medal
(38:43):
round and face the Soviets, who up to that point
in the Olympics had outscored their bonuts fifty one to eleven.
H So on February twenty second, nineteen eighty and I
know I've mentioned this before, but I actually watched this
match as a I guess it wasn't even nine yet.
It was right before my ninth birthday. Oh yeah, I
(39:03):
wasn't even that into hockey, but we were an Olympic family,
and I remember I have a very distinct memory of
being in my parents' bedroom for some reason, which I
usually wasn't much allowed in because it was I don't know,
it was the seventies. It was like, don't go in
my bedroom. But we had this little black and white TV.
I guess my dad was watching other stuff out there
(39:25):
on the larger console TV, but I remember being in
their bedroom and watching this match on the little black
and white TV and knowing, as a little eight year old, like,
what a huge, huge deal this was.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, And you said something that I think kind of
applied to a lot of the nation. Hockey was not
really a thing, nothing like it is now in the
United States. Like you had to live in a place
where your rivers froze over every year to like hockey.
It was a very regional sport. And yet, like you said,
the entire United States tuned in for this match because
(39:58):
it was the evil So yeah, and like to our
younger viewers or listeners, like you don't you can't imagine
what they told us about the Russians, Like essentially, if
you were a kid in the seventies, eighties, probably sixties too,
you were basically taught that if you ever crossed paths
with anybody from the Soviet Union, they would slash your
throat just as soon as look at you. Like that
(40:20):
was essentially what people thought of the Soviet Union at
and vice versa. So it was the big bad Soviets
who were just this huge juggernaut of a team, and
the Americans, the ragtag underdog Americans standing up to these
these this evil empire. And that's why everybody tuned in.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Yeah, it was I remember very just having the distinct
feeling it was communism versus democracy, really right.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Right, which is yeah, yeah, which is I think what
happened in that that Super Bowl with the Falcons versus
the Patriots. Same thing.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Oh man, my my darkest day as a Falcons fan.
Maybe that was rough. It was either that or losing
to the Jets last week. Oh yeah, oh man, I
can't talk about it. Okay, very sad season ticket holder here.
So Americans of course came back and won, and I
remember our goalie Jim Craig, like skating around after wrapped
(41:19):
up in the American flag, and that was my first
like real taste of like understanding what it was like
to be an American and again a different time where
you know, it was the Cold War, and it felt
like a real win for democracy in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yeah. So a lot of people, well I think basically
everybody calls that game the Miracle on Ice. Yeah, And
the reason why is because the commentator who was calling
the hockey game, al Michaels, who as far as I note,
had only called one hockey game previously at the Sapporo
Winter Olympics years before. He did a magnificent job. And
(41:55):
as the time is running out in the third period,
America staged to come back and scored two goals and
they were up four to three with several seconds left.
And remember this Soviet team was good enough that they
could score a goal and tie within a few seconds.
So the Americans are just skating around the ice trying
to keep the puck away from the Russians and al
Michaels is counting down the seconds and I think with
(42:17):
about four seconds left, and it became clear that the
Soviets working to be able to score a goal, he goes,
do you believe in miracles?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
And if you watch it today you just get just
amazing chills, just even the last like thirty seconds of
that game. It's really neat.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
For sure. I wonder if before the game Al Michaels
was like, it's a puck, al, it's a puck, it's
a match, it's not a game. And if anyone brings
up icing, just you explain.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
It, right, just pretend it doesn't exist exactly. So ESPN
called it the most famous hockey game ever played.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Sports Illustrated ranked it in nineteen ninety nine is the
top sports moment of the twentieth century. It was a
big deal. And again I would strongly urge you if
you don't go why the whole match, watch at least
a third period, or watch the last couple of minutes
and several minutes after that where they're, yeah, they're celebrating.
It's just you can just feel like the whole country
going crazy.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah. Pretty incredible. Uh. And if you're ever you know,
at a dinner party and a group of people and
they're talking about when the US beat the Soviets for
the gold medal, you can be the actually guy because
that was not the gold medal match. I think a
lot of people remember it that way because it was
such a big deal. But that was an I guess
a bronze round. Yeah, and the US went on to
(43:31):
win that gold against Finland yep, two days later. Pretty great,
Pretty great, everybody.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
So that's it. Those are the only moments that changed
the world in the history of TV. All the rest
of them were pretty whole home.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
That's right. You got anything else, I got nothing else, sir.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
All right. I think this was a pretty good start
to twenty twenty six, don't you.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I think it's great.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Okay, Chuck said, great. That means it's time for listener now.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Yeah, you know what, Let's let's start off the year
without a listener mail and just make a push to
remind everyone that we're still kicking off pretty soon in
a few months, it'll be or eighteen in April. And
we always are still looking to grow the show, and
we don't do it much, but if you could rate
and review the show, that means a lot. If you
could tell friends and family, like, hey, there's this podcast
(44:21):
been around forever and we like it. We may or
may not be Golden Globe nominated. We don't know at
this point because we're going to find out next Monday,
but yeah, go out and spread the spread the good word.
And we look forward to seeing everybody on the road
this year in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, we're going to be on the road this month
in January, also in April, and then Canada this summer.
So you can get tickets and info at stuff youshould
Know dot com. And if you want to say Happy
New Year or whatever, you can send us an email.
We love that you can send it to stuff podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is the first
episode of the two double two six.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I thought there was already another episode out.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yes, this is the first one, Chuck. I think this
comes out on one to one.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Really twenty six, okay, pretty sure. Yeah, I thought we
had already crept into twenty six. But that's no matter
because it's still two five for us.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, there's some weird time stuff that's going on. We're
essentially straddling two years right now. And uh, I'm wearing
a silver spacesuit because of that.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
All that to say, if we're a little loose is
because this is our last recording session of the year,
and so we're closing this out or opening up the
next year with a good old fashioned top ten that's
not a ten, like just like the old days.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
That's right, we're finishing out twenty twenty five and stuff
you should know fashion.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Right, Yeah, look just like we did in probably twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, probably, Chuck. If you'll allow me to begin.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Boy, it's just a classic old school opening, Chuck, do
you have a TV.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Have you ever seen TV?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I knew it was coming. Yes, it was either that.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Or Webster's defined TV right, right, one of the two.
I've seen TV too. Not only have I seen ATV,
I've watched what's broadcast on TV as well multiple times
throughout my life.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Same.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
It's funny we chose this moments that changed the world,
TV moments that changed the world. And as you're kind
of researching this, she realized, like, for better or worse man,
TV is like it may modern culture more than anything
else I think in the entire world. Would I would
argue more than the internet? Ooh interesting, Yeah, I'm just
(02:09):
gonna say it.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
All right, I'm not going to argue. I'm a not
an arguing mood.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, people who disagree, just follow us on this journey
into TV moments that changed the world, and maybe your
your opinion will be changed either way. I don't fault you,
all right, Great, So let's start at the beginning, when,
like the day that TV really kicked off in earnest,
there was a day that this happened. It was April thirtieth,
nineteen thirty nine, in Flushing, New York, on Long Island.
(02:39):
And if you are familiar with that date in that area,
you may know that this was the nineteen thirty nine
World's Fair, and this is where TV got its start,
where it was really kind of unveiled to the public
at large.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
That's right, not the nineteen forty World's Fair. HowStuffWorks dot
com because there was not one.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
No.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, so, you know, TV had been around for a bit,
but it wasn't super widespread at this point. I feel
like we talked about this a lot lately for some reason.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yes, stuff is just really clicking these days. I'm not
sure why.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It really is. But they had broadcast limitations. They could
only broadcast, you know, for a limited number of miles,
like out a limited number of miles. But by the
time that World's Fare came along, they were like, hey,
this is a chance to make a really big splash.
The RCA Corporation, the Radio Corporation of America, which also
then led the way in TVs. They were putting out
(03:32):
some pretty good televisions at the point, but they were
luxury items, and again they didn't have like the most
regular broadcasting going on. But they knew that this World's
Fare was a chance to make a super big splash.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Right, So, yeah, this is where they were going to
start selling TVs to the public. The problem is is,
you can have all the TVs in the world, but
if you don't have anything to watch on it, good point,
what are you going to do? Nothing? You're going to
sit there like a jackass and look at a blank TV.
So Luckily thought of this and they founded NBC, the
National Broadcasting Company, to start broadcasting stuff. So they brought
(04:08):
the whole thing together, the broadcasting and the TVs themselves,
and they debuted it on April thirtieth, nineteen thirty nine,
when they I think created the world's first live television
broadcast of Franklin Roosevelt kicking off the nineteen thirty nine
World's Fair.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
That's right, And we did mention this one in another episode.
But he was, you know, sort of the the first president,
daddy of TV, granddaddy of TV. And like you said,
he opened it up there and you know, NBC had
gotten there and they had their you know, you know,
now antiquated TV technology all lined up. It was just
(04:46):
pretty whiz bang at the time. Sure, and they sent
signals through these mobile broadcasting trucks, which I mean, it's
pretty amazing. That in the nineteen thirties they had the
technology to even accomplish that, right, So it's pretty impressive
still to this day, and broadcasts that signal out to
about two thousand viewers, which seemed like a big number
(05:09):
at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I imagine I'm still impressed with news fans. Oh yeah,
sure of the time, which is our time.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I'm impressed with news fans today, That's.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What I mean. Oh, okay, I didn't get it across
very well.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, So one thing I saw I was looking up
pictures of this nineteen thirty nine Worlds Fair, the RCA pavilion.
Apparently they built one of their televisions within transparent I
guess class or something like that, maybe plastic, so you
could see the internal working part so that people wouldn't
think it was just some sort of trick.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh wow, interesting, that's how new it was. Yeah. Oddly,
since we're recording our Christmas episode, I feel like this
pause before the next one is going to include like
jingle bells and things, right, But it's not going to.
We're just simply moving on to another one, which is
Disney's Wonderful World of Color. I'm sure you like I
(06:04):
grew up watching I guess by the time we were
watching it in the seventies, and or me in the seventies,
and you likely in the eighties, it was called The
Wonderful World of Disney.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I watched Walt Disney Presents, I think, is what it
was for me.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Oh okay, so I guess, yeah, since I'm only a
year older than you, I was watching The Wonderful World
of Disney. Because this show had some title changes. But
the reason we're talking about this at all, it's because
of the advent of color television, which Walt Disney himself
really got behind and was like, Hey, I want to
be the dude that kind of brings this to the masses.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Right, because just like how you could have TVs but
nothing to broadcast, you could have color TVs and if
you weren't broadcasting in color, what's the point. And again,
this was an issue for RCA, and by then, of
course they had NBC, and NBC was rolling pretty well. Yeah,
but Walt Disney's anthology series had started years before and
it was on ABC. NBC wasn't broadcasting in color. So
(07:02):
Walt Disney personally held a meeting with NBC and said,
we want to do this, apparently saying he said that.
He said, Bellas, I want this deal. If necessary, I'll
stand on my head in Macy's window.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, and all the executives said, you don't have to
do that. It's a pretty good idea, So why are
you being weird?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, but he was just that enthusiastic about the whole thing.
But he personally went and pitched the idea of the NBC.
And the reason why again is NBC was the first
network to broadcast in color, and so Walt Disney really
kind of pushed this through because NBC would have broadcasting
color either way, but Walt Disney wanted to do it
in like high style.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, for sure. And this is a TV show that
launched in nineteen fifty four and ran for thirty four seasons,
obviously at first in black and white. And like I
mentioned earlier, you know the name changes. I guess they
had one, you know, between My Birth and your Birth,
because it was initially called Disney's Wonderful and then Magical
World of Disney. Yeah, and then when the color debuted,
(08:05):
he was like, we really want to be sort of
obvious with this, so let's call it Disney's wonderful World
of Color. Yeah, but we still haven't even said what
this was. I mean you mentioned anthology series. It was.
It was like a variety show essentially. They had cartoons
and stuff. I remember when I was a kid that
the Davy Crockett TV Show, and it says in this
(08:27):
house Stuff Works article it launched the coonskin cap craze.
And I have a picture of little five year old
me with a musket and a leather vest and a
coonskin cap on my head. So I was into that.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I had one too, but I don't have a picture
of it, so I can't prove it.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I can probably dig that up and throw it up
on the Instagram maybe to align with this, so I'll
try and find that.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So they were also like a lot of documentary programming, right,
and you would think like, okay, hard hitting frontline esque documentaries. No,
not at all. It meant that they would go and
film stuff under various themes at Disneyland. They were essentially
big ads for Disneyland. He used that big time, And
I mean they were well produced and interesting, sure, but
(09:15):
they really went to that well quite a bit in
every episode, not in the first episode though, instead the
first episode, and this is the moment that changed the
world as far as color TV goes. It was on
September twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, and it was the
episode was two parts, and the first one was an
Adventure in Color, and it really was a bit of
(09:37):
an adventure, like it was a bunch of little segments
that really kind of showed off what you can do
with color TV and just must have knocked the socks off,
knocked the coonskin caps off of all the little kids
sitting at home.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
That's right. And it also featured something called the Spectrum Song,
which kind of explained what was going on because I
guess they felt the need to explain color to people
who had gone around their entire lives seeing real life
and color. But I guess, like you said, it was
a pretty whiz bang thing to see the thing, to
see it on your TV for the first time, so
(10:10):
they went to great links to probably over explain that.
And this is also when we got the debut of
Professor Ludwig von Drake from the Disney Duck World.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, he was kind of an eccentric inventor. His self
written bio was He's an eminent psychologist, renowned color expert, etymologist,
the most sought after a lecturer in the world. He
is undoubtedly the outstanding genius of the century. So he
was fairly egotistical, but he was also funny, and he
(10:45):
became beloved. And this is where he came from that
first adventure in color. Half and then the second half
was a theatrical release featuring Donald Duck. Because all of
these Disney cartoons that we just take for granted today
used to have to go to the theet to see them.
But when you went to the theater to see them,
they were in color. You saw them on TV there
in black and white. Now you can see him in
(11:07):
color on TV without leaving the comfort of your home.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What was their deal with the ducks was that? I mean,
I guess it's just like any other cartoon animal, but
they really leaned into the ducks.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It was a great excuse to draw something without pants.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Ah, okay, that makes sense. I never got into any
I was a little old for like ducktails and all
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
That was a good show.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
So like Donald Duck was my only I guess exposure,
my only duck exposure. His little feathered Fanny. Oh sorry,
sorry listeners in England, I know what that means there.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's right. Yeah, nice kit to be. To be perfectly honest,
I was a little old for ducktails too, but I
still watched it.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah. Well, you know, we all regress.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I never progressed, I think.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Oh, come on, So, just like.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Disney probably promised RCA and NBC, like they started selling
color TVs like hotcakes thanks to in large part, the
Wonderful World of Color, Disney's wonderful World of Color, to
be exact.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
That's right, And that feels like a great time for
a break. Huh, yes it does.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
All right, We'll be right back everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
All right.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So you might think that we're going in chronological order,
we are not. We're going to go back in time
a little bit from the debut of color TV, but
after the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine, two years after,
and we're going to go to you know, I never
found out what network this was on, did you. No,
(13:01):
that's silly.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Let's just call it ESPN.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Okay, so on ESPN in nineteen forty one, on July first.
This is a moment that changed the world. Some people
who are watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Philly at
the Philadelphia Phillies essentially saw the first television ad ever.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, it was either nine or ten seconds long. It
depends on the source that you cite, but it was
pretty short and all it was. And I know we've
talked about this before because I have seen this before
and I can't think of any other reason why I
would have, right, But it is a scene of a
bull of a clockface just sort of superimposed over a
map of the United States, and it's had the phrase
(13:42):
over the top of it like a chiron the world
runs on Buluva time. And about four thousand people saw
this ad, and I imagine they were like, what the
heck is this? Why am I hearing about Bulova?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And why do I suddenly feel like buying a bowl
of a watch?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah? Probably.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
What's super quaint and sweet is that the ad costs
bull of a nine dollars. That's the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Even for the time, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, even at the time, that's one hundred and ninety
five dollars today, So that was quite a sweet deal. Sure,
And what it did was show like this is a
we can do this, we can advertise two people. And
it's not to say that there were just no ads
on TV before the bulov A ad, but they just
followed a completely different format, so much so that the
(14:32):
Bowl of A ad is pretty safely considered among historians
as the first actual TV commercial.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, and that's for a couple of reasons. You did
mention some other ads, But before that, it was like,
you know, this program is sponsored by whatever, and that
was just the ad. It wasn't actual TV commercial in
between content. The first ad, I guess if you count
that stuff was a nineteen the year TV debuted, really
(15:02):
and it was a furrier. Man, it seems like it
would have been from like eighteen thirty, but it was
a furrier in Boston called ij Fox Furriers who sponsored
the CBS orchestra. It was a program called the Fox Trapper.
So that, you know, that's kind of how ads went
up until forty one.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and that was the radio format. It was essentially
they just took the format that had been pioneered on
radio and now they were doing it on TV. That's
not really an ad. If you call that an ad,
you're just being contrarian, right. Sure, there were still even
other ads but they were illegal because it wasn't until
nineteen forty one that the FCC started issuing licenses to
run commercials on on broadcast networks. But that means that
(15:44):
the ads before them were illegal. I could not find
any mention of what these ads were for, but I
got the impression that they were just experimentation networks kind
of on the sly figuring out how to do it
as they went along. So again, Buliva is the first
actual TV commercial that was legal, and that was also
(16:05):
produced with the intent, the sole intent to sell a
particular product on air. That was it. That space of
air was filled up by an ad. That was the
first time ever.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
That's right, And I knowe we mentioned this before, but
for those who aren't familiar with our cannon in the
old days of stuff, you should know our boss Connel Byrne,
who commissioned the whole show to begin with and changed
our lives. Thank you Connell. He came up to us
at one point after we had been doing it a
while and said, hey, people are running ads on podcasts
(16:39):
now and we need to get into this. And we
were like, no way, no how, We're not going to
foulop our show. By selling it, and then eventually he said, well,
you know, if we can sell this thing, it'll make
the company money and on down the road, maybe this
just becomes your job. I don't know if he said that,
but the writing was kind of on the wall, and
maybe this can just become the only thing you do
(17:00):
here and you won't be writing articles for housetiforks dot
com anymore. And we went tell us more.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, here, you make a good case here. Yeah, hey, Chuck,
we're real quick speaking of our cannon. So for all
of you listeners out there, it's a little behind the
scenes peak. Oh yeah, we have like I think, including
short stuff in the neighborhood of two thousand, three hundred episodes.
It doesn't really get it across when you say twenty
three hundred. We have a ton of episodes in our
(17:28):
back catalog, and we like people write in all the
time and they're like, you should do this episode. We're like,
we did like seven years ago, and it's like a
lot of people just have no idea the episodes we've done.
So we're trying to like figure out how to get
it out there better.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, for sure, that's the reason we mentioned this. We've
been sort of putting our heads together at iHeartMedia because,
like you said, a lot of people don't you know,
I think iTunes serves up about three hundred. But here's
a little trick. If you're on your podcast player for
iTunes on your iPhone, if that's how you listen, when
you scroll down through like the first five episodes, there's
(18:04):
a little button there that says see all two thousand
plus episodes, And if you click on that, they're all
there and you can scroll through. But you know, a
lot of people don't know that. A lot of other
players don't you know, who knows how many they display,
But it's a frustration for us, and so it's just
a gentle reminder that there are literally thousands of these
episodes out there.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, they're all also, I think you said on the
iHeartRadio app and stuff youshould know. Dot com has the
master repository and a pretty good search function. And one
of the ways we figured out like we could probably
like we could probably do a lot better about mentioning episodes,
like specifically when they come up in another episode, like
a new episode. But I feel like we're gonna have
to do a lot better. Yeah, we normally do, which
(18:47):
is like, did we do some episode on something related
to this? Yeah, we gotta figure it out, but we will,
cause there's just a bunch of great episodes just sitting
there waiting for people to discover.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
That's right, right, And with that we move on to
oh wait, yes.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
We have to do the Super Bowl comparison. You have
to do it. If you talk about the bulovcy we
really yes.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
All right, you take it away, then I repe stick part.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So if you write or talk about the Bulova ad,
it's basically incumbent upon you to compare that ad cost
the nine dollars cost to what it would have cost
had they run it on a Super Bowl. And so
for the twenty twenty five Super Bowl, if Bulova had
run this, they would have paid two point three five
million dollars for those ten seconds.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Quite a deal, that's right there. I just kept us
from being sued.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Uh well, I don't even think we're even I think
we're supposed to say the Big Game, aren't we.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It's no like we're supposed to not buy into that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Oh okay, I gotcha, all right. Moving on to the
next one on the list is the that was a
good segue too, because we can't talk about like our
old episodes and then say, also, there was a devastating
tsunami in two thousand and four in the Indian Ocean, right,
because that happened, and we know if you're of a
actually you don't have to be much of a certain age.
But on December twenty six, two thousand and four, that
(20:07):
was an undersea earthquake about a nine point zero magnitude
that set off this incredible tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
I mean, we've done episodes on tsunamis and earthquakes, and
we've talked about all this before. But it was about
one hundred feet tall, traveling at five hundred miles an hour,
not much advanced warning, and was one of the most
(20:30):
devastating tragedies in human history. It killed close to two
hundred and thirty thousand people in fourteen countries. It also
sparked the biggest rail disaster in history when it completely
wiped out a train traveling along the coast of Sri Lanka.
And we mentioned all this because the only positive that
(20:51):
came out of this was the media's reaction, which sparked
the incredible amount of philanthropy and aid and giving in
its aftermath.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah, because the I was reading a study on this.
It is called media coverage and Charitable Giving after the
two thousand and four tsunami. It was by Philip H.
Brown and Justin Minty, and they said, like, the media
coverage was unprecedented, Like it didn't they the world didn't
forget about it in like three days. It was twenty
(21:22):
four hour coverage of this disaster for weeks on end right.
And because these images were broadcast around the world, and
because it was so mind bogglingly devastating, people just opened
up their pockets. I saw ninety nine different countries donated,
and thirteen of those countries had never donated for a
(21:45):
natural disaster relief before it got to everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, and there are I think about one hundred and
ninety five countries in the world.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, which it's kind of like, do better other ninety
six countries.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah. I imagine the countries that didn't give have their
own issues, had their own issues going on.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
You know, Well, no I feel bad, No, don't feel
so bad.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
But they have done studies. That two thousand and six
study that you referenced, they said that the Catholic relief
charities got a million dollars in three days, which would
turn out to be small beans in the long run,
but over three days that's quite a haul. Save the
Children got more than six million dollars in four days.
The Lutheran World Relief raise more money in a week
(22:30):
than it does in a year. And the AP found
that thirty percent of American families donated in the first
two weeks, and just from the United States though, was
about one point six billion, and estimates around the world
were about fourteen billion dollars raised.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, and just to kind of go over the power
of the media, one thing I left out here is
that that same study found that one extra minute of
coverage on television equated to an increase in Internet donations
by six seemed to twenty percent. So like this the impact,
it's just essentially like a classroom lesson in the impact
(23:08):
that media can have, the positive impact that media can have.
And that's I mean, that's that is definitely something to
TV's credit. Yeah, you want to move on to well,
move backward to Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, again, we're jumping all over the timeline and we're
in Vietnam right now because I guess we should talk
a little bit about pre Vietnam and as far as
media coverage go, because before that World War Two and
certainly the Korean War, what you got as far as
media coverage was highly sort of curated and regulated, government
(23:43):
mediated film reels. You would get news updates, they would
play in movie theaters. By the time we got to Vietnam,
they had, you know, like handheld cameras you could literally
take to the front lines, and it really changed the
way war coverage went and as result, the way the
way people felt about the war. Because World War Two,
(24:04):
everyone was they were pretty raw, raw, and you got
these raw, raw films, So morale was big in America.
You know, they were like, hey, this is great, We're
fighting the Nazis, right.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Another huge factor was that by nineteen sixty six, ninety
three percent of American homes had a TV, and just
thirteen sixteen years earlier, in nineteen fifty, it was nine percent. Yeah,
so TV was firmly established in the American psyche. You
remember in wonder years, whenever they sat down and had dinner,
(24:35):
they always had the TV on showing Vietnam. Yeah coverage. Yeah,
that's what it was like.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And so the fact that everybody had TVs, the fact
that now there was like cameras that you could easily
allow a journalist to embed with, and the idea that
the government really shouldn't control propaganda, shouldn't control the news
like that created this atmosphere where the broadcasters were willing
(25:05):
to show like really heartrending, unflinching stories. Yeah, what the
soldiers fighting for the United States were doing in Vietnam
and what was being done to them, And it really
shaped America's view of that war.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah, I mean it definitely made the mood and how
we saw the war like pretty dour. But people, you know,
going into Vietnam, there were a lot of people already,
like before even the coverage started that were like, what
are we doing in Vietnam?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Again? Right?
Speaker 1 (25:37):
It wasn't like World War Two where where the Nazis
were trying to you know, take over the world, and
so you know, this just made everything worse, but you know,
worse in a positive way because it was showing the
reality of things. It wasn't government controlled, I'm sure they were,
you know, just countless meetings behind the scenes and the
(25:58):
Oval Office where they were like we're getting crushed by
the reality of this war and how it's being depicted
in the media. I'm sure they were pretty upset about
losing control of that narrative.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, No, they definitely were. And later on, I think
the Iraq War was another considered another television war. Certainly
the Gulf War the first one was. And the government
kind of learned from losing control over the narrative in Vietnam,
but they weren't able to regain control, and so the
(26:30):
sentiment toward Vietnam and the United States kept getting worse
and worse, and protests were getting bigger and bigger. There
was like a very healthy anti war movement. And essentially
because the public was feeling this way, the public sentiment
was that way toward Vietnam, and because if you turned
on the news, the evening national news, you would see
(26:53):
like terrible coverage that was not flattering at all to
what the United States was doing in Vietnam, elected official
basically had no choice but to listen to people. And yeah,
it definitely led to the earlier, probably an earlier withdrawal
than the United States may have otherwise taken.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, and you know, changed the way that it went
moving forward, because you know, the writing was on the
wall at that point for the US government, They're like,
we can't go back to World War Two. As much
as they wanted to kind of control that narrative, the
American people at that point would not have it moving forward.
So it really kind of changed the whole relationship of
how any kind of conflict is covered.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
It did. So now they've struck a balance between allowing
reporters to embed and just relying on those national news
reporters to disseminate the propaganda, because if you watch embedded coverage,
for the most part, it is fairly yeah, raw raw,
even if it's not overtly raw rack. Is that the
American public's a little more savvy than that. It's still
(27:53):
nothing like the coverage was of Vietnam from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Well, yeah, and just the way wars are fought now,
it not like a front line like you had back then.
So I remember watching the Gulf War and it was
just all those like you know, black and white shots
of bombing things from thousands of feet above, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, and then the beginning of the Iraq War, remember
it was shock and awe, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it
was like it was produced essentially for TV, the initial
attack on Iraq.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
It's so gross to I don't know, I'm not gonna editorialize,
but to name something like that, like, hey, that sounds
pretty pretty awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
You know. I think it was either RUMs Fell or
Cheney who came up with that, And I'm not surprised
either way.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
For sure. Should we take another break?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Oh gosh, I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Sure, all right, we'll take another break and finish up
with a couple of more moments that changed TV history
right after this. All right, we're going to move on
(29:12):
to another show. But we should mention that the original
House of Works article included, of course, the moon landing,
which was a huge TV event, but we covered all
of that in which episode.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We have an episode on that. It's called How Going
to the Moon Works from twenty nineteen, and it was
a really interesting episode that really covered in depth of
lunar landing.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
That's right, part of the twenty three hundred episodes plus.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
That's right, But we're.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Not going to talk about that. We're going to talk
about a TV show that we've talked about here and
there before called Cops. Because Cops is and I know
I mentioned this in that other episode. Whatever it was,
it was a show that I used to watch with
more regularity than I like to admit now I think
everyone watched it a lot. Well, it was never and
I'm not excusing it, but it was never like appointment TV.
(29:57):
In fact, I don't even know when it came on.
This was just in my younger channel surfing days where
it was like you're surfing around, Cops was on. I
would watch Cops and I was never like yeah, yeah,
go go. But you know, I've found it probably entertaining
and amusing, and now that i'm a little older and
no more of you know, slightly embarrassed that they were
(30:19):
sort of exploiting many times people who had mental illness
and who were suffering through poverty and addiction. And so
I'm not so proud of that. But I'll admit that
I watched my fair share of Cops.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I watched it too. So Cops changed the world in
two ways. And this moment was March eleventh, nineteen eighty nine,
which is when it debuted on Fox. This is just
three years after Fox premiered, nine months before The Simpsons
even premiered, Cops started on Fox, and it helped make
Fox the fourth network. It was just such a huge
(30:53):
show right out of the gate. And the two ways
that it changed the world is one set the groundwork
for reality TV. Yeah, you can make a pretty good
case that it was one of the It may be
the originator of reality TV. There weren't scripts, There wasn't
any star, There wasn't any narrative or plot lines. It
(31:15):
was just like, here's some cops and here's a crime
that they're going to fight. We don't have a script.
We just generally know what's going on, which ostensibly is
the basis of any reality show.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, I think you know what we should do an
episode on at some point is I can't remember the
name of it now because it just came to me,
but I think kind of the first real reality show
was that one where they followed the American family around
in the seventies, maybe.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
When a PBS or British or something.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I think it was PBS, and then they made a
fictional account of that as a movie not I think
four or five, six years ago. That was pretty good too.
I think James Scandalfini was in it.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Okay, I would have guessed Peter Sarsgard as the dad.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
It was really good though. Anyway, that really kicked off
reality TV. MTV's Real World didn't come out till ninety two,
but Cops certainly laid the groundwork for kind of like
trashy reality TV, you know, right. Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The other effect that it had on the world was
it really reinforced unfair racial stereotypes. Yeah, among white Americans
toward Black Americans, people of color in general in the
United States. It was an enormous show. It drew like
eight million viewers each week. That's a crazy amount of people.
(32:30):
Peaked in the nineties. But even from the first episode,
civil rights groups were like, whoa wait a second here,
like a lot of these criminals are black, and this
is way disproportionate to reality. I thought this was a
reality show. And the Cops producers, Barber Langley Productions, were like, well,
(32:51):
it's reality ish, you know, like it's not the actual
portrayal of reality. It's a skewed toward entertainment version of reality.
So just settle down. And the civil rights groups are like,
we're not settling down. That actually makes it even worse.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah, I mean, the cops loved it because they were
portrayed as heroes. It was a great recruiting tool for
police officers. And you know, I guess we have some
stats from the Marshall Project. They did a analysis in
nineteen ninety four. Most of the officers on balance were white,
(33:24):
suspects were more likely to be black or hispanic as
far as the numbers go. They found that while sexual assault, robbery,
and murders account for just thirteen percent of all crime
in nineteen ninety four, at least it was forty three
percent of what you saw on cops. I don't remember
a lot of sexual assault and murder though, Like everything
I saw on cops were like robberies and drug arrests
(33:48):
or just you know, dy being drunk out in public, stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Like that, or dude hiding under a kiddie pool.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, he's probably drunk er on drugs, right, Yeah, that's
what I I remember. I don't remember like more serious crime.
So I was kind of wondering about that stat.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, I don't remember that either. They also found that
same study found that the show was far more likely
to associate black and brown people than whites with violent crime.
They were black and brown people were forty percent. There
was a forty percent chance compared to a thirteen percent
chance for whites. So it was like it wasn't just
(34:26):
civil rights groups like sensing there's something off about this,
like people conducted actual studies and found also that a
viewer of Cops was likelier to maintain the racial stereotype
that blacks are typically criminals than a person who didn't
watch Cops. So it had a really large impact. And
yet despite that, this is ninety four that that study
(34:48):
came out, it wasn't until twenty thirteen that Fox was
finally like, okay, fine, fine, yes, okay, well cancel the show.
We've made our money over twenty five seasons, and thanks
to civil rights organization Color of Change, Fox dropped it
and that was the end of Cops forever.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Right, No, no, no. It was picked up by Spike TV.
They ran it until twenty twenty. Then after twenty twenty,
with all the you know, sort of light shined on
police brutality, they said, you know, maybe it's just not
so good to run this anymore. But Fox Nation stepped
up and brought it back in twenty one and it
is still going in his thirty seventh season. The other
(35:26):
thing it did was sort of create the the idea
of the Florida Man because they started I believe they
debuted in Broward County and shot a lot there over
the years, and they shot I think they shot more
than one hundred cities in the end, but a lot
of their content was shot in Florida and kind of
sort of reinforced this whole Florida Man thing.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah. I don't know that that's skewed.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Yeah, all right, fair enough, let's finish up.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Chuck on like a really happy moment. Well, depending on
which nation you're from, the USSR or the United States.
If you're from the United States, this is a really
good high point for your country. In nineteen eighty and
the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York,
to be exact, and there was this one event that
(36:17):
America was really the unlikely winners in and it was
men's hockey.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
That's right. This is during the height of the Cold War,
so the US and the Soviet Union. You know, it
was just it was all you heard about if you
were a kid growing up in the seventies and eighties.
It was such a big deal. The Soviet Union won
the Olympic gold medals in ice hockey in fifty six
and then sixty four, sixty eight, seventy two, and seventy six.
(36:44):
So they ran the Olympics basically from the mid sixties
to the mid seventies, and then nineteen eighty came along
and you had a US hockey team and first of all,
the Soviet hockey team. I believe there was a player
Fetisov who said later on that was probably the best
team that the Soviet Union had ever put together. So
(37:07):
they were the drago and we were a little rocky
because the American team at the time, this is before
they allowed pro players to play in the Olympics, there
was a bunch of college kids and they were I
mean to call them underdogs was a massive understatement.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, And a lot of the credit goes to the
coach of the Olympic men's team, Herb Brooks, who was
the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey coach.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Kurt Russell. Oh yeah, yeah, he played him in the movie.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I thought that was Emilio Estevez.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Well done.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So the United States did not this, despite how it ended,
they did not get off on a very good footing.
There was an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden a
few days before the nineteen eighty Olympics, same month and everything,
And they Soviet Union and the States played in this
(38:01):
exhibition match and the Soviets really you could use the
word walloped pretty effectively in this case. The Soviets won
ten to three. So it did not look like the
United States men's hockey team was going to produce much
in the Olympics that year.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, you don't see a lot of double digit scores
in hockey if you're not familiar with hockey, you know,
you see a lot of like two to nothing, three
to two. Right. Once you score over ten goals, it's
a big, big deal. So the Americans weren't even supposed
to advance that much in the Olympics. But they had
a bunch of comeback wins, had a lot of close
calls that they won, and they got into the medal
(38:43):
round and face the Soviets, who up to that point
in the Olympics had outscored their bonuts fifty one to eleven.
H So on February twenty second, nineteen eighty and I
know I've mentioned this before, but I actually watched this
match as a I guess it wasn't even nine yet.
It was right before my ninth birthday. Oh yeah, I
(39:03):
wasn't even that into hockey, but we were an Olympic family,
and I remember I have a very distinct memory of
being in my parents' bedroom for some reason, which I
usually wasn't much allowed in because it was I don't know,
it was the seventies. It was like, don't go in
my bedroom. But we had this little black and white TV.
I guess my dad was watching other stuff out there
(39:25):
on the larger console TV, but I remember being in
their bedroom and watching this match on the little black
and white TV and knowing, as a little eight year old, like,
what a huge, huge deal this was.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, And you said something that I think kind of
applied to a lot of the nation. Hockey was not
really a thing, nothing like it is now in the
United States. Like you had to live in a place
where your rivers froze over every year to like hockey.
It was a very regional sport. And yet, like you said,
the entire United States tuned in for this match because
(39:58):
it was the evil So yeah, and like to our
younger viewers or listeners, like you don't you can't imagine
what they told us about the Russians, Like essentially, if
you were a kid in the seventies, eighties, probably sixties too,
you were basically taught that if you ever crossed paths
with anybody from the Soviet Union, they would slash your
throat just as soon as look at you. Like that
(40:20):
was essentially what people thought of the Soviet Union at
and vice versa. So it was the big bad Soviets
who were just this huge juggernaut of a team, and
the Americans, the ragtag underdog Americans standing up to these
these this evil empire. And that's why everybody tuned in.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Yeah, it was I remember very just having the distinct
feeling it was communism versus democracy, really right.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Right, which is yeah, yeah, which is I think what
happened in that that Super Bowl with the Falcons versus
the Patriots. Same thing.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Oh man, my my darkest day as a Falcons fan.
Maybe that was rough. It was either that or losing
to the Jets last week. Oh yeah, oh man, I
can't talk about it. Okay, very sad season ticket holder here.
So Americans of course came back and won, and I
remember our goalie Jim Craig, like skating around after wrapped
(41:19):
up in the American flag, and that was my first
like real taste of like understanding what it was like
to be an American and again a different time where
you know, it was the Cold War, and it felt
like a real win for democracy in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yeah. So a lot of people, well I think basically
everybody calls that game the Miracle on Ice. Yeah, And
the reason why is because the commentator who was calling
the hockey game, al Michaels, who as far as I note,
had only called one hockey game previously at the Sapporo
Winter Olympics years before. He did a magnificent job. And
(41:55):
as the time is running out in the third period,
America staged to come back and scored two goals and
they were up four to three with several seconds left.
And remember this Soviet team was good enough that they
could score a goal and tie within a few seconds.
So the Americans are just skating around the ice trying
to keep the puck away from the Russians and al
Michaels is counting down the seconds and I think with
(42:17):
about four seconds left, and it became clear that the
Soviets working to be able to score a goal, he goes,
do you believe in miracles?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
And if you watch it today you just get just
amazing chills, just even the last like thirty seconds of
that game. It's really neat.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
For sure. I wonder if before the game Al Michaels
was like, it's a puck, al, it's a puck, it's
a match, it's not a game. And if anyone brings
up icing, just you explain.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
It, right, just pretend it doesn't exist exactly. So ESPN
called it the most famous hockey game ever played.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Sports Illustrated ranked it in nineteen ninety nine is the
top sports moment of the twentieth century. It was a
big deal. And again I would strongly urge you if
you don't go why the whole match, watch at least
a third period, or watch the last couple of minutes
and several minutes after that where they're, yeah, they're celebrating.
It's just you can just feel like the whole country
going crazy.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah. Pretty incredible. Uh. And if you're ever you know,
at a dinner party and a group of people and
they're talking about when the US beat the Soviets for
the gold medal, you can be the actually guy because
that was not the gold medal match. I think a
lot of people remember it that way because it was
such a big deal. But that was an I guess
a bronze round. Yeah, and the US went on to
(43:31):
win that gold against Finland yep, two days later. Pretty great,
Pretty great, everybody.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
So that's it. Those are the only moments that changed
the world in the history of TV. All the rest
of them were pretty whole home.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
That's right. You got anything else, I got nothing else, sir.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
All right. I think this was a pretty good start
to twenty twenty six, don't you.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I think it's great.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Okay, Chuck said, great. That means it's time for listener now.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Yeah, you know what, Let's let's start off the year
without a listener mail and just make a push to
remind everyone that we're still kicking off pretty soon in
a few months, it'll be or eighteen in April. And
we always are still looking to grow the show, and
we don't do it much, but if you could rate
and review the show, that means a lot. If you
could tell friends and family, like, hey, there's this podcast
(44:21):
been around forever and we like it. We may or
may not be Golden Globe nominated. We don't know at
this point because we're going to find out next Monday,
but yeah, go out and spread the spread the good word.
And we look forward to seeing everybody on the road
this year in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, we're going to be on the road this month
in January, also in April, and then Canada this summer.
So you can get tickets and info at stuff youshould
Know dot com. And if you want to say Happy
New Year or whatever, you can send us an email.
We love that you can send it to stuff podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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