What US president was the first to appear on TV while in office?
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07-02-03, 07:11 PM
Sherasi


1951: AT&T completes construction of the first transcontinental broadband-communications network. President Harry Truman's Sept. 4 address to the United Nations/Japan peace treaty conference is the first live transcontinental television broadcast.

September 23, 1952 -- Richard Nixon's "Checkers" Speech

Oddly, it was Richard Nixon who discovered the political power of the new medium. Richard Nixon, who was pilloried by the press throughout his career, nonetheless discovered the salvific influence of television. Imaginatively, aggressively, Mr. Nixon used television in a way it had never been used before to lay out his personal finances and his cultural virtues and, hence, to save his place on the Republican national team (and, ultimately, his place in the American political pantheon). That same year, 1952, also witnessed the first televised coverage of a national party convention and the first TV advertisements. But it was Nixon's famous speech that turned the tide from a party-based to a candidate-controlled political environment. By using television as he did--personally, candidly, visually (his wife Pat sat demurely next to him during the broadcast)--Mr. Nixon single-handedly created a new political style.

07-13-03, 02:57 PM
DorianGreyed

Sher, Nixon was the Republican Candidate for Vice President in September 1952. He didn't become President until 1969.


A Brief Timeline of TV

1923 - Vladimir Zworkin invents the ionoscope, the "eye" of the TV camera

Late 1920s - Experimental TV demonstrations

1928 - May, General Electric begins semi-regular telecasts from Schenectady (Mostly for a few engineers who had made receivers)

1929 - Experimental color TV

1930 - NBC opens experimental TV station W2XBS in New York

1931 - CBS opens experimental TV station

1938 - NBC transmits several telecasts from New York, including scenes from (then) current Broadway productions. NBC has first live, unscheduled coverage of news event ( A fire broke out on Ward's Island across from a crew filming in Queens. The crew turned the cameras around.)

1939 - NBC, looking for a memorable event to inaugurate its regular TV service, broadcasts the opening of the World's Fair in New York. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is shown arriving and delivering the opening address on April 30, 1939, becoming the first incumbent US President to appear on TV. Announcer Bill Farren described the proceedings and also interviewed people at the fairground.

Main Source
The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh. Ballantine Books, New York. 1999

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