This low budget newscast is interesting to watch for the newsperson's opinions on matters of the day, though at this point, newspapers were still the preferred news source and had more detailed coverage. On the running time: Back then, newscasts were very short, running between 12 minutes and 14.5 minutes. The remaining 15 minutes was usually filled with a light music show....though one network filled out the remaining 15 minutes with a children's sci-fi adventure serial! EDIT: After extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that this is the oldest surviving example of an American newscast. In case you really wanted to know, the oldest surviving kinescoped example of an American public affairs series for which the exact air date is known is an episode of "The People's Platform" from 7 December 1948, which dicussed wage increases and aired on CBS. "Operation Success", a public affairs series which interviewed disabled war veterans in the hope to get jobs for them, has two surviving episodes from 1948 and aired on the now-defunct DuMont network. The oldest surviving example of a documentary series is the 26 February 1948 episode of "Eye Witness", which aired on NBC.

I'd take that concise 12' over any bloated 'news' program today. I actually shouldn't say today, since I stopped watching years ago. What is the news reader (and that's what they simply are) wearing? Is that a robe? What fabric is that? I agree that the last snippet was by far the most important piece of news, but maybe that's seeing it through 21st century eyes. The man didn't seem stupid so I'll let it go. What can you say about the graph. Graph's on T.V.! Along w/ the sports, all handwritten. I like that he states news and commentary up front, unlike today when some hide under the ,"I'm a journalist, so I am objective." banner. No one is objective. Let me know the lens from which you see. So, to hear him call the Italian Communists, Commies, was refreshing. Especially w/ the slight disdain in his voice. I was surprised by the second photo from the Commie riots. Very graphic, as he points out. Finally, I'll take one still shot and write as you go sports scores over ESPN any day. But then again, I haven't watched that drivel in years.

Aside from the flavor for the atmosphere after the war that this gives you, there were 2 things that struck me as unexpected for such an early broadcast: First, that photo from Italy showing the man with the mashed in face is much more graphic that I expected. Even today it would probably get a "viewer discretion is advised" disclaimer if it appeared on the news. Even Fox!Second, even though the graphics look hand drawn, as an earlier comment says, I was fascinated with the animated charts. Anybody have any idea how they did that when TV was in its infancy? It almost looks like a sophisticated Etch-a-Sketch.A very interesting piece of film.==========Here's a short biography I discovered on Mr. Utley and his Frayn, who both played an important role in early Chicago television:Clifton Utley's career at NBC-Chicago spanned the years 1932-1959 and included both radio and television. He came to broadcast journalism via the classic City News Bureau-Chicago Daily News-Associated Press route. His interest in---and advocacy of---foreign affairs was a constant throughout his professional life (he was a director of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations for eleven years beginning in 1931).During the years of World War II, Utley's 7:55-8:00 am newscast from studio H (sponsored by Quaker Oats) provided many Chicagoans with their first news update of the day--- coupled with analysis that other broadcast journalists who merely rewrote wire copy couldn't match.When television came to NBC-Chicago in the late 1940's, news director Bill Ray quickly tapped Utley to become the medium's first newscaster-commentator (thus beginning a tradition carried on later by Len O'Connor and Dick Kay).When Clifton Utley suffered a stroke in 1953, his wife Frayn (who had moderated a daily foreign-affairs broadcast on CBS in 1940 and 1941) ably filled the gap.Clifton Utley returned to radio in 1956 and television the following year. He retired in 1959 and died in January of 1978 at the age of 73.Frayn Utley died in August, 2001 at the age of 97.You can regularly see the Utley's son Garrick on CNN. Their daughter-in-law Carol Marin remains Chicago's most distinguished broadcast journalist.(Cited from http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/utley/index.html)

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Very interesting old television footage. It seems today's broadcasters have 'forgotten' important communications aspects of news and current affairs presentations that were once in common usage over 60 years ago, thus present-day news services might do well to consider their reintroduction. Back then, evidence suggests the expectations of a news service were such that it be fully comprehensible to its audience without the need for its contents having to be simplified and or dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator--an unfortunate process that's now become almost universal with present day media and news services.



A few specific observations about this kinescope recording:



1. This film clip distinctly lacks present-day hype and BS. It's a pleasant change to hear well presented facts without broadcasters hyping them up.



2. This news presentation presupposes its audience actually has reasonable intelligence, thus it's expected to be able to concentrate on an individual concept/news item for more than 15 seconds a time! This broadcast takes for granted its audience will still have a good grasp of the presented subject days later--perhaps a strange notion these days where micro-news-bites are forgotten so quickly that they've to be continually reinforced through repeated hourly news broadcasts. (In 1949, listeners and viewers would be very unlikely hear or view more than one news broadcast per day.)



3. It's graphs are easy to understand. They're little more than simple hand drawings but they're clearly presented whilst the voice-over progressively provides basic explanations for each issue. Essentially, the graphs are presented in a simple, utilitarian manner sans unnecessary, distracting and annoying graphics dross, which we're so often force-fed these days.



4. Upfront, the newsreader, Clifton Utley, states that there's some uncertainty as to whether he'll have time to present the last news item. Furthermore, he does not attempt to squeeze it in at the cost of other items, and in the end, he omits the item altogether. Instead, presented topics are allocated an amount of time that's commensurate with what's needed for their correct presentation and it's done in ways that maximize audience comprehension. ('Tis a lesson that ought to be sorely learnt by present-day media.)



5. There's no irritating strident presentation that's so common today. Newsreader Utley is not rushed and his presentation is relaxed, pleasant and informative. His presentation style could hardly be further from the incessantly repeated streams of junk info bits that purports to be today's news.



6. In 1949, the U.S. doesn't seem quite so obsessed with marketing its position in the world as it does today. Here, the world map backdrop is irrelevant to the presented news items, thus it's been defaulted to a neutral location instead of what's more usual today--that of a seemingly ever-present, distracting, screen-sized map of the USA or similar, which is usually irrelevant and unrelated to the item that's currently the subject of the broadcast.



Surprisingly, this old-style way of presenting news is refreshingly clean and simple when compared with what's now commonplace. Not only is its presentation more pleasing and relaxed, but also it's actually a more effective means of communication.



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QUESTION: this 1949 NBC television broadcast news footage seems to be the only archive of its kind here at I.A.; being an orphan it's somewhat out of place. Excluding obvious, well-known world headlines etc. does anyone know if other similar news recordings still exist from this era? If so, then where are they? Is it still likely CBS, NBC etc. possess similar daily archives such as this one?



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[I reckon there ought to be more of these recordings somewhere…. In the TV era before videotape and during the later time of the 2"-quad videotape years, 1957-c1980--that period before videotape was cheap, easy and commonplace--film was regularly used to both record and archive television programs. Programs, whether initially recorded on film by film cameras or whether recorded from TV cameras onto 16mm film by kinescope (or from 1957 onwards, after being edited on videotape), were usually all transferred onto 16mm film for later broadcasting, distribution and archival storage.



Except in instances where NO attempt was made to record live TV broadcasts, essentially, from the earliest days of television in the 1930's through to well into the advent of videotape, 16mm film was the preferred and only method for recording delayed TV broadcasts, for TV program distribution and for the archiving of television programs. Therefore, it would have been normal practice for all such news footage to be recorded onto film, as here with this NBC News footage of 17th March 1949. Hence, my slight surprise to find that there's only one recording of this type available at the Internet Archive. Perhaps one explanation is that only this single recording escaped the clutches of the NBC archive. Or perhaps, as I more likely suspect--and which is so often the case with much early television footage--the remaining archives probably have already been destroyed.]



- June 14, 2011It's unfortunate that today we've forgotten this simpler, more relaxed style of news presentation.