For NASA, Moon Landing Was Not A Broadcast Event, Until it Was, Engineer Reveals in New Podcast, "We Interrupt This Broadcast" Launching Today
Join Host Bill Kurtis and Narrator Brian Williams as They Offer A Behind-The-Scenes Look at The Apollo 11 Moon Landing, Including an Exclusive Interview with Richard Nafzger, The Schoolteacher Who Brought The Moon Into Our Living Rooms
NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- A global audience of roughly 600 million people, a fifth of the world's population at the time, watched in awe as Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar module and uttered those now famous words, "That's one small step for man…" But, it was never meant to be a broadcast event, according to the Richard Nafzger, the schoolteacher-turned-engineer whose assignment was to get a television signal 240,000 miles from the lunar surface onto televisions in living rooms around the globe.
In an exclusive interview for the "Man on the Moon" episode of the "We Interrupt This Broadcast" podcast, launching July 20, Nafzger revealed that broadcasting the moonwalk was more an afterthought than a focus for NASA, until the moment for the broadcast was upon them.
"NASA really didn't fully understand the meaning of TV," he recalls. "They never thought about the public wanting to see it. It wasn't probably until after launch that people started to think about what this TV could mean. They were arguing about it all the time."
Then, as the astronauts were getting ready to leave the capsule, he was told, "It better work." And all of a sudden, the whole mission was about TV.
It did work. So well, in fact that Robert Wussler, Walter Cronkite's producer, called it "the world's greatest single broadcast" in television history.
In addition to Nafzger, the "Man on the Moon" episode features archival and recorded contributions from nearly a dozen people intimately involved in the moon landing coverage, including: Walter Cronkite; Don Hewitt, former CBS News producer, Joel Banow, CBS News' director of the Apollo 11 telecast, Stan Lebar (Westinghouse Program Manager responsible for creating the ApolloTV Lunar Camera), and more.
The podcast, based on Joe Garner's New York Times Bestselling book of the same name, celebrates the crucial role broadcast journalism has played throughout our nation's history. Hosted by legendary broadcaster Bill Kurtis and narrated by NBC's Brian Williams, each episode unfolds with the brisk pace and tone of a thriller while presenting an in-depth look into the reporting of, and reaction to, events that have since become benchmarks in history. The contributors are a "Who's who" in broadcast journalism.
The docuseries, produced by i4 Media Ventures, LLC, will be presented over six 12-episode seasons for a total of 72 episodes. Each season is comprised of 12 episodes, all published simultaneously: 10 episodes in each season are based on events that occurred in the broadcast era and two are based on seminal moments that occurred in early American history (such as the passing of the 19th Amendment) and dramatized as if reported by broadcast journalists. Each episode concludes with the journalists offering candid and critical analysis on how they and their fellow reporters covered the event.
Season One features the following landmark moments in American and world history:
- "Oh, the Humanity!" – the Hindenburg disaster (May 6, 1937)
- "…about to embark up on a great crusade" – D-Day Invasion (June 6, 1944)
- "In Dallas Texas, three shots were fired…" – JFK Assassination (November 22, 1963)
- "One Small Step…" – Apollo 11 Moon Landing (July 20, 1969)
- "The president was [not?] hit," – President Reagan shot (March 30, 1981)
- "Can we all get along?" – L.A. Riots following the Rodney King verdict (April 29, 1992)
- "Princess Diana has died…" – The Death of Princess Di (August 31, 1997)
- "Shots fired at Columbine High School" – The tragedy at Columbine (April 20, 1999)
- "…Nobody knows for a fact who has won Florida" – The 2000 presidential election (November 8, 2000)
- "This has to be deliberate" – 9-11: America Under Attack (September 11, 2001)
- "Band of rebels on a killing spree" (dramatization) – The Nat Turner slave uprising of 1831 (August 21, 1831)
- "Tennessee House gives women the right to vote" – The passing of the 19th Amendment (June 4, 1919)
"We Interrupt This Broadcast" is now available for download on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and wherever listeners get their podcasts.
"We Interrupt This Broadcast" is being represented for ad and sponsorship sales by New York and Los Angeles-based Crossover Media Group Sales (http://www.crossovermediagroup.com).
About Joe Garner
Dubbed "the Ken Burns of the written and recorded word" by talk legend Larry King, Joe Garner is a veteran radio industry executive, narrator, host and producer, as well as a multiple New York Times bestselling author. His seminal multimedia book, We Interrupt This Broadcast, innovatively pairing audio, photographs and text, has sold more than one million copies and has for two decades served as a go-to chronicle of America's broadcast history. The "We Interrupt This Broadcast" docuseries podcast is the maiden project of i4 Media Ventures, LLC, co-founded in December 2020 by Garner, Ron Hartenbaum and Scott Calka.
Editor's Note:
A link to an online press kit, with a downloadable version of the Moon Landing episode, the original media kit supplied by NASA and other audio-visual assets, is available upon request.
Media Contact
Abigail Anello, Rubenstein Public Relations, +1 212-805-3071, [email protected]
Brian Hyland, Rubenstein Public Relations, 212-805-3055, [email protected]
SOURCE We Interrupt This Broadcast
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