[Read all Times reporting on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. | Sign up for the weekly Science Times email.]

The television news director Joel Banow absorbed endless hours of “terrible old B movies” filled with extraterrestrials and rocket ships long before he oversaw the production of an authentic space opera.

While the astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were making history above, Mr. Banow played his part on the ground, helming the coverage of the Apollo 11 mission for CBS News while standing on his feet like an orchestra conductor.

Mr. Banow treated the 32 hours of programming on July 20 and July 21, 1969, like “a big blockbuster kind of motion picture,” he said in an interview, which meant days of rehearsal, custom animation and a cast of correspondents and producers so large that the end credits lasted seven minutes.