

You couldn’t see Cronkite the news had just come in on the wire service, and onscreen was a slide that read, “ CBS NEWS BULLETIN.” Minutes later, with the cameras finally on, Cronkite appeared in shirtsleeves, spruce but shaken. The sixties started in 1964, observers like to say, and 1964 started that afternoon, November 22, 1963, when Cronkite broke into “As the World Turns.” “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade,” Cronkite said, his voice grave and urgent. Kendrick’s report had been set to air again that night, on “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.” The rerun was cancelled. “What has occurred to you as to why you’ve succeeded?” Kendrick asked Paul McCartney. The Beatles found it hard to take the search seriously. “Some say they are the authentic voice of the proletariat.” Everyone searched for that deeper meaning.

“The Beatles are said by sociologists to have a deeper meaning,” Kendrick reported. “That’s not a collection of insects but a quartet of young men with pudding-bowl haircuts.” And, four days after that, “CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace” broadcast a four-minute report from “Beatleland,” by the London correspondent Alexander Kendrick. “Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” Two weeks later, the band made their first appearance on American television, on NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report.” “The hottest musical group in Great Britain today is the Beatles,” the reporter Edwin Newman said. “For our last number, I’d like to ask your help,” John Lennon cried out to the crowd. On November 4, 1963, the Beatles played at the Prince of Wales Theatre, in London, exuberant, exhausted, and defiant.
