HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 23, 1963 (UPI) - The television networks suspended all commercial broadcasting and entertainment programs yesterday shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy.
CBS-TV announced that this policy would be in effect until after the chief executive's funeral. NBC-TV said it would stay with the story until it is over. ABC-TV reported its coverage would be extended indefinitely. Sources at NBC-TV and ABC-TV said also there was little doubt they would not resume any kind of normal programming until at least after the funeral.
There will be no commercials on any of the three networks, all of which are commercial, the sources said.
The numbing news that the president had been fatally shot, and Gov. John Connally of Texas seriously wounded, by a sniper in a Dallas window grew into an almost unreal, national nightmare as the television hours wore on.
Quiet, resigned shock was the prevalent tone, from the reporting to the ordinary Americans and high-level politicians who passed through the home screen. Some persons wept openly. Others were seen going to church. James Hagerty, news secretary to former President Eisenhower and now a vice president of ABC's parent company, quietly and expertly explained Secret Service operations. David Brinkley noted the crowd that started to gather opposite the White House, "for no particular reason."
The composure shown by Jacqueline Kennedy as she accompanied her husband's casket from the hospital to a funeral home, and later as it arrived by plane in Washington, could only have made one's heart and respect go out to her. She was a magnificent first lady in a terrible moment of history.
Likewise, the brief remarks of the newly sworn-in president, Lyndon Johnson, as he de-planed at Washington, were impressive in their composure and determination. "I ask for your help - and God's," he said. CBS-TV reporter Charles Von Fremd summed up the scene aptly: "An historic but aching moment."
There were shots of a captured prime suspect in the motorcade killing, Lee Oswald, 24, a onetime defector to Russia, avowed Marxist and admirer of Fidel Castro. And there were also shots of Johnson being sworn in as 36th president of the United States by a lady U.S. district judge, with those present including his wife and Mrs. Kennedy.
