JFK60: 2021 Flashback Interview with David Von Pein, Curator of his YouTube ‘JFK Channel’

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CHICAGO – At 12:30pm Central Time on November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullet. The shots that echoed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, has resonated now for 60 years, but beyond the actual event there was a treasure trove of TV and radio coverage that was recorded.

David Von Pein (DVP) has collected this coverage and it can be found on his comprehensive YouTube channel. Click JFK CHANNEL to start browsing. NOVEMBER 2023 UPDATE: Since our 2021 interview, DVP has uncovered some 11/23 & 11/24/63 radio coverage from (click link) Fort Wayne, Indiana and 11/22/63 TV coverage from ITV United Kingdom.

Walter Cronkite Delivers the ‘News’ on November 22nd, 1963
Photo credit: CBS-TV

Not only has David Von Pein found high quality as-it-happened video from the three major networks at the time – CBS-TV, NBC-TV and ABC-TV – but the channel also contains the local Dallas coverage (TV and radio) and a collection of radio coverage from different markets, special programming and post assassination coverage … including the killing of JFK alleged assassin (Lee Harvey Oswald), and JFK’s funeral. The depth, breadth and dive into this media is a revealing time machine, both in being within the midst of the events and the state of the journalism of the time, including an important step in television news coverage that preceded and predicted the future 24/7 news cycle.

I’ve been a fan of the channel for many years, and I continue to visit for the updates or to re-listen or re-watch the hours and hours of broadcasting, learning more about the times of the assassination and the atmosphere that the media created. The television news teams 58 years ago were best described as “radio on the air,” as abilities to go live to an event was hampered by the overwhelming bulk of cameras and remote broadcasting capabilities in the pre-digital age. Yet, NBC-TV was able to show the Lee Harvey Oswald killing live (still chilling) and the technology of “instant replay,” which was to make its debut at a college football game in December of 1963, was then utilized to re-show a murder on television.

I’ve truncated the interview from 2021 with David Von Pein, with a new question to finish this 2023 version.

HollywoodChicago.com: The depth, breadth and comprehension of your YouTube channel on the assassination of John F. Kennedy continues to astound me. In collecting all this audio/video ephemera what strikes you about the state of the U.S. and the world on November 22nd, 1963, and what do you think it reveals to us today?

David Von Pein: This is probably going to sound silly and naive, but whenever I watch or listen to anything from my JFK Assassination audio and video collection, I often can't help but think to myself how much 'better' everything seemed to be back in the early 1960s. I think perhaps I belong permanently in the Kennedy era of the '60s. And my fixation on JFK material and the other videos focusing on that decade would tend to support my last statement.

HollywoodChicago.com: In a previous interview that you've done, you ruminated on the strangeness of the “Father Knows Best” episode that gets interrupted by the ABC bulletin on the assassination, and then is returned to complete before they go to their 24/7 coverage. In the other audio or video within the collection, can you point toward any other instance where the initial bulletin is proclaimed, and then the ‘normal’ programming is resumed to strike a before and after ironic note?

Von Pein: Well, I don't know about the ‘ironic note’ part of this, but there are other examples of television and radio stations and networks resuming their regular programming on 11/22/63 after delivering their initial bulletins on the Presidential shooting. A good example of this happening comes from the CBS-TV. On November 22nd, when the normal CBS soap opera that was airing between 12:30 and 1:00 PM [CST] – “As The World Turns” – was interrupted at 12:40 PM [CST] by Walter Cronkite's first voice-over bulletin about the assassination attempt that had just occurred minutes earlier. That first CBS-TV bulletin lasted for precisely 59 seconds, with CBS then going back to regular programming with a Nescafe coffee commercial.

HollywoodChicago.com: How about radio?

Von Pein: One notable instance of regular Friday programming being resumed on 11/22/63 after the first bulletin was aired include the coverage of the ABC Radio Network. [Note: The resumption of the regular program that was interrupted by Don Gardiner, however, is not heard on my archived version of the ABC Radio broadcast. But it is clear from Gardiner's words that the day's regular programming was being resumed for at least a brief period following ABC Radio's very first bulletin concerning the shooting].

By the way, ABC radio was the first media outlet – at 12:36p, six minutes after the shots were fired – to air the bulletin that beat all other national radio and television networks to the punch on November 22nd.

ABC Radio Was the First to Break the JFK story on November 22nd, 1963
Photo credit: ABC Radio

HollywoodChicago.com: Speaking of radio, which most casual searchers of media from the day don’t consider, what was one of your best finds in that area of broadcast?

Von Pein: The WTIC audio [Hartford, Connecticut] has become one of my very favorite assassination-related media before-and-after examples. The radio call-in show that was being aired was filled with average and unremarkable topics like cake recipes, dog clipping and a caller giving advice on keeping garbage cans clean. Then at 12:55pm CST the first bulletin was broadcast, and after that the world changed forever.

It was first made available in 2013 on YouTube by Doug Bertel, the son of Dick Bartel, one of the WTIC announcers … who can be heard during the November 22nd Hartford coverage.

HollywoodChicago.com: What was the circumstance of you obtaining the rare audio of the first JFK bulletins on NBC-TV, only recorded because an engineer was testing his equipment that morning?

Von Pein: The name of the man who recorded that rare NBC-TV audio is Phil Gries, an avid collector of archival television audio. He had his audio tape recorder set up next to his television set at his home on Friday, November 22, 1963. He had just finished recording the audio of a program called "Tell Us More,” which aired that day from 12:00 to 12:30 PM [CST] on WNBC-TV in New York City.

At 1:45 PM, he noticed an "NBC Bulletin" slide come on the screen, interrupting the program [“Bachelor Father”] that was airing at the time on WNBC. Phil then quickly hit the "record" button on his tape recorder and was able to tape announcer Don Pardo's first two bulletins concerning the shooting of President Kennedy, plus the next four minutes of NBC-TV's coverage of the unfolding tragedy taking place in Dallas.

My acquisition of a digital copy of Phil's original ‘lost’ NBC-TV bulletins came about on November 21, 2013, just one day prior to the 50th anniversary of the assassination.

HollywoodChicago.com: What in the hours of broadcasting, both on TV and radio, do you think are the weirdest moments, either in an on-air gaffe or unnecessary over-editorializing in the midst of the assassination and related events?

Von Pein: There are several odd gaffes by the media that occurred during the weekend of the assassination. The easiest way to answer this question is the provide a link to the specific topic … click ERRORS for the audio and video clips.

The David Von Pein JFK Channel
Photo credit: YouTube

HollywoodChicago.com: I was born in 1960, you were born in 1961. Given we were toddlers when the assassination took place, how do you think it affected our generation as an event in the background of our subsequent lives?

Von Pein: I wish I could peer into a crystal ball, so I could find out how the majority of people would answer that question. But as for me personally, I'd have to say that it has affected my life perhaps quite a bit more than most other people, simply due to the fact that I have immersed myself deeply in the subjects of John F. Kennedy and his assassination for much of the last 20 plus years.

And, of course, most of those people can also vividly remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the awful news on November 22, 1963. It affected many of them very deeply, as they felt they had actually lost someone very close to them personally. You and I, Patrick, don't have such memories. And maybe it's for the best that we don't. It spares us the burden of dealing with the tragic memories of that terrible Friday in Dallas.

HollywoodChicago.com, 2023: Finally, what fact or situation have you learned about 11/22/63 that is different from two years ago?

Von Pein: I'd have to say it would be the very recent ‘bombshell,’ revealed in September of this year. As you might have heard, Paul Landis – a Secret Service agent riding in the motorcade behind JFK's limo on 11/22/63 – now claims that he himself found the infamous ‘stretcher bullet’ [Warren Commission Exhibit CE 399] on the top of the back seat of the Presidential limousine.

And Landis also is claiming that he then took that bullet into the hospital and placed it on JFK's stretcher in the emergency room. And … get this … he then didn't say a word to anyone about such an important discovery for 60 years! Needless to say, I'm a bit skeptical about his whole story, as I discuss in detail at my website (CLICK HERE).

By PATRICK McDONALD Editor and Film Critic/Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com