posted 08-17-2006 07:49 PM               

I was only 4 1/2 at the time ... I vividly remember Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon (my Mom had to wake me up when it was time!), but I would like to know more about what it was like to be experience the moon landing as a citizen.

I recall Buzz Aldrin saying, after the Apollo 11 crew returned from their mission, "Look, Neil, we missed the whole thing!" Of course, he meant that the crew had missed the world-wide party that ensued because man had finally landed on the moon.

If this DVD doesn't already exist, I think it should! It could include a large chunk of TV broadcast (do the Walter Cronkite tapes still exist?), film of the crowds on Cocoa Beach for the launch, parties in the street, those kinds of things.

If not its own DVD, maybe it's not too late to add it in to the upcoming Apollo 11 release by SpaceCraft Films?

posted 08-17-2006 09:41 PM               

Charles Kuralt co-narrated the special, and some clips are featured from a program he hosted back in 1969 in which they sort of took a coast-to-coast snapshot of America on the day humans landed on the moon, featuring typical Kuraltian "little picture" vignettes of ordinary people on the least ordinary of days. Wasn't a perfect documentary (I recall a factual error/unsubstantiated claim or two), but it was pretty darn evocative.

I think CBS/Fox may have released it on VHS not long after it aired. Do a Google search with the title "The Moon Above, The Earth Below" and you may find some sources. Again, it's not precisely what you may be looking for, but it does have some "slice in the life of America the day history happened" content that may get you started.

posted 08-18-2006 09:15 PM               

A&E first did this in November 1988 with six hours of the JFK assassination breaking coverage (broadcast, sustaining, from the time NBC rolled videotape at 1:56 PM EST through 6:30 EST, then an hour and a half of highlights from that night's coverage), and did it again in July 1989 with the launch (from about T-10 to about 40 minutes into the flight), EVA and splashdown from Apollo 11.

All were very interesting, with lots of stuff that normally gets edited out. The launch had a taped interview with Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan recounting their launch experiences from Apollo 10, an interview with the director of the LRL, and a videotaped Frank McGee interview with Mike Collins. You also got to see the huge Apollo 11 "NBC News Space Center" that was built in Studio 8H for the mission, some nicely cheesy period animation when the Saturn was too high to be tracked by television, and lots of vintage correspondents in now-comical period clothing, including Frank McGee, Chet Huntley, Peter Hackes, David Brinkley, Floyd Kalber and untold others.

The splashdown was also neat, featuring filmed clips from the crew recovery, then videotape of the live coverage from the time the helicopter door closed to the moments after the astronauts stepped into the MQF and shut the door. All of Nixon's comments are included. In between, there's filmed biographies of the Apollo 11 crew, and a brief interview with three crewmembers of "Old 66" conducted by Dallas Townsend.

As an amateur broadcasting history nut, I loved these things. I wish they still did them -- I loved not only watching the events "as they happened," but also the time-capsule stuff, how stories were covered then, etc.