We’ve witnessed Jack Ruby murdering Lee Harvey Oswald. It’s been 41 years now since we first saw live TV from the surface of the moon. We’ve seen a string of space shuttles screaming to reach escape velocity, viewed from cameras bolted to their solid-rocket boosters.

Still, broadcasting live to a TV audience under inhospitable conditions remains a thing of wonder — witness a mere two months ago the coverage of the coverage of NBC embed Richard Engle broadcasting live from a combat vehicle accompanying U.S. combat troops as they departed Iraq. This “Because We Can” spirit, which in 1950 required taking a behemoth of a camera to stream real-time video from a lumbering air freight is a feat geeks still find tantalizing six decades later.

In 1950 television was in its infancy, still trying to unseat radio as humanity’s primary medium. So even though the BBC’s proof-of-concept stunt was bound to be done by someone someday somehow somewhere, actually doing it was really something.

Indeed, one of the most iconic moments in the history of live TV was still more than a year in the future. Edward R. Murrow dazzled a U.S. audience tuning into the Nov. 18, 1951, premiere of See It Now with live shots of both San Francisco’s Golden Gate and New York’s Brooklyn bridges on a split screen. And that was from fixed, terrestrial camera positions.

The logistics and risks of BBC’s 1950 “Operation Pegasus” were daunting. Cameraman Duncan Anderson was outfitted like a member of the crew — sporting a (now) vintage, fur-collared flight jacket totally necessary as he stood at an open, doorless hatch to do his job, while the Bristol Freighter aircraft cruised over London and the surrounding countryside for about an hour. The BBC did test flights for a week before the live Sunday broadcast and solved the last of the problems with only a couple of days to spare.

“Everything seemed set for another page in television history,” intones an uncredited (but possibly tuxedoed) BBC news reader in a filmed story about their story. (Coverage of the coverage goes way back. See video above.)

The Beeb continues:

But throughout a week of test flights the flying television crews were faced by difficulties that threatened the outcome of the proposed program. Thanks to nonstop work by the engineers, all the problems have apparently been solved. But it was not until Friday that one of the most difficult — interference on the waveband used by the airborne television transmitter — was overcome.

Perhaps not entirely. There was no recording made of the live broadcast, and the British Film Institute (BFI) says of the test transmission: “Images are of poor quality with a great deal of interference.”

The unprecedented program that the network had gone to considerable lengths to make possible was somehow not earth-shattering enough for BBC Head of Television Programmes Cecil McGivern. He wrote two nasty memos to subordinates, vexed that the “Operation Pegasus” broadcast had run 30 minutes into what should have been the start of The Children’s Programme — without any warning from an announcer.

McGivern’s concern may seem like typical British uptightness, but in a way he was quite prescient about viewer expectations. A similar scenario played out in reverse 18 years later, during the infamous Heidi game. NBC was airing an American Football League game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders on Nov. 17, 1968. At the stroke of 7 p.m. EST, the network was contractually obliged to cut to the classic children’s movie Heidi.

The Jets were leading 32-29. There were only 65 seconds left in the game. What could possibly go wrong?

The Raiders scored twice and won. The NBC phone switchboard melted down. The incident became the next day’s leading story, with one rival network news anchor reading passages from Heidi over clips from the Jet-Raiders game, Daily Show style.

Strangely, the BBC didn’t go airborne again for another five years — perhaps McGivern put the kibosh on things. And fixed-wing aircraft would play basically no role in live electronic newsgathering.

Helicopters became the must-have aircraft. Local stations started making helos standard in the ’70s, when microwave technology was widely embraced, and a lot of Vietnam era pilots were suddenly available. Helicopters remain a staple of daily reporting on traffic in many markets and, of course, of such breaking news as high-speed car chases and wildfires.

And now anyone can be a broadcaster — a narrowcaster, anyway — with a smartphone, a Qik account and in-flight internet.

Video: BBC/Alexandra Palace Television Society

Source: Various

See Also:

• Jan 29, 1901: DuMont Will Make TV Work
• Nov. 23, 1963: Doctor Who Materializes on BBC
• Jan. 22, 1950: Jury Acquits Tucker of Fraud
• July 24, 1950: America Gets a Spaceport
• Oct. 1, 1908: A Basic Car for the Great Unwashed
• Oct. 1, 1957: Thalidomide Cures Morning Sickness, But …
• Oct. 1, 1982: Portable Music Enters the Spin Zone

Authors: John C Abell

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