When we went to Gimbels to watch TV, and saw McCarthy
More often than not, or so it seems, TV is showing somebody or other testifying before Congress about something or other.
It happens so often that we’re all but inured to it.
It wasn’t always that way, of course. When a special U.S. Senate committee investigating organized crime was televised in 1951, it was seen by 30 million TV viewers, with about one-third of all homes with TVs tuned in — a huge hit at a time when many homes still didn’t have TV sets.
So when U.S. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (RWis.) squared off in a battle of titans against the Army during Senate subcommittee hearings in April 1954, it had all the makings of another audience-grabber.
But in Milwaukee, at least, not so much.
In the biggest city in McCarthy’s home state, “interest … appeared to be lukewarm,” The Milwaukee Journal’s Doyle R. Getter reported on April 23, 1954, following the first day of wall-towall TV coverage of the hearings.
“In the television sections of downtown department stores Thursday, the groups of viewers around the sets seldom numbered more than 25 or 30. Most of those who stopped to watch satisfied their curiosity within a few minutes and went on, their places being taken by others. … In one popular bar, the set was turned on and a lone patron watched the proceedings. He had to listen hard to catch the testimony over the noise of a dice game being played by the tavern’s other three patrons at the end of the bar.”
The Milwaukee Sentinel, in its story on the first day of televised hearings, found more interested viewers, claiming “thousands of Milwaukeeans played hooky from their jobs or housework” to tune in.
“One downtown department store had as many as 50 people at a time watching the hearing on seven sets going in its TV department,” the Sentinel reported on April 23. A number of persons, obviously taking time from shopping they’d planned, made themselves comfortable by sitting on the floor in front of sets. Others stood.”
“TV sets were going in bars and taverns all over the city, as patrons watched history in the making over a glass of beer.”
Still, to some — including, it seems, The Journal — “history in the making” was being measured as just another TV show.
On April 24, 1954, The Journal noted disapprovingly, the ratings for the first two days of the Army-McCarthy hearings “continue to lag in viewer interest as compared with the Kefauver Senate crime committee hearings.”
The next day, The Journal reported that NBC had pulled the plug on its live coverage, citing the loss of two days of advertising revenue. Instead, it would air filmed highlights of the day’s testimony during prime time. CBS, which with NBC dominated the TV airwaves in 1954, didn’t even air the hearings live, opting for selected highlights during late night.
The two weaker networks, ABC and DuMont, continued to broadcast the hearings live, and to provide feeds for affiliates of other networks that wanted them.
On April 27, The Journal reported that its TV station, WTMJ, would pull the plug on live hearings, too, returning to its regularly scheduled programming during the day as of April 28. WOKY-TV (now WVTV-TV), an ABC-DuMont affiliate that then aired on Channel 19, continued to carry the hearings live.
Although American political life learned a very different lesson from the hearings — widely seen at the time and since as the moment that halted McCarthy’s rise — the lesson broadcast TV learned was clear: Wall-to-wall coverage of government in action was too expensive.
In 1966, CBS canceled some of its live coverage of congressional hearings on the Vietnam War to air reruns of “I Love Lucy”; fabled CBS News boss Fred Friendly resigned in protest. The three major networks carried the start of the Watergate hearings in May 1973, but went to a pool arrangement soon afterward.