Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to 100 Years of Television, where for 100 weeks that started in October 2025, we're going to recall the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television and video.
The countdown will culminate on September 7, 2027. That's the 100th anniversary of the day television was invented. Paul I'm Paul Schatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode, television became a time machine with the first instant replay. Today is countdown number 50. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
By the fall of 1963, Ed Sullivan had been one of the most popular figures on American television for more than 15 years.
The 30 to 40 million viewers who tuned in every week for his Sunday night variety show made Sullivan a cultural icon and one of the most influential gatekeepers of mid 20th century show business.
Sullivan regularly booked British and European talent on his show and in October 1963 he flew London to scout future bookings.
Sullivan and his wife Sylvia landed at London's Heathrow Airport on October 31, just in time to witness a crowd of crazed teenagers screaming uncontrollably as a quartet of curiously coiffed young men emerged from another plane on the tarmac.
Startled by the chaos, Sullivan turned to a colleague and asked, who are those boys?
They were, of course, the Beatles.
When their paths first crossed with Ed Sullivan. John, Paul, George and Ringo were already the most popular pop stars in Britain.
That day at Heathrow, they were just returning from a short tour of Sweden to a country already caught up in the throes of Beatlemania. And Ed Sullivan was about to play an instrumental role in the phenomenon's global spread.
Though largely still unknown in the U.S. the Beatles had been a rising force in Britain since their first single, Love Me do, went to number 17 on the pop charts in the fall of 1962.
Their second single, Please Please Me, was their first to reach 1 in the winter of 1963, followed in the spring by their second chart topper, from Me to youo.
By the Time She Loves yous, yeah, yeah, yeah, reached the top of the charts that summer. The Fab Four were firmly perched at the pinnacle of Britain's pop music scene and crowds of screaming teenagers drowned them out wherever they performed.
But in America, the phenomenon didn't sow its first seeds until two months after Ed Sullivan asked the fateful question at Heathrow.
Despite their juggernaut up the British charts, Capitol Records The US Affiliate of emi, the band's label in Britain, was slow to recognize their potential.
The band's first releases, Love Me, Do Please, Please Me and she Loves yous, were released in the US on the minor VJ and Swan labels.
All three received scattered airplay, but none charted. There was no buzz, and Capitol Records considered the whole proposition a British act on American airwaves rather risky.
Meanwhile, in England, another Beatles single, I Want to hold you'd Hand, was released on November 29, 1963, and likewise sped to the top of the charts sometime in mid December. Carol James, a DJ at WWDC in Washington D.C.
got his hands on an imported copy of the Beatles new single, weeks before Capitol planned to release it in the U.S.
accounts vary, but legend has it that a teenager whose friend had just returned from England brought the single to the station and urged James to play it.
Carol James started playing I Want to hold you'd hand on WWDC on December 13, 1963.
This was not the first time the Beatles were played on American radio, but this time the reaction was explosive.
Phone lines lit up and WWDC put the song on near constant rotation.
Within days, other stations began scrambling to find copies, and Capitol Records, which planned to release the single after the holidays, reconsidered the schedule.
I Want to hold you'd hand was just starting its climb up the US Charts, but the Beatles journey from England to New York was already in the works.
As soon as he got back to New York, Ed Sullivan told his staff about the frenzy he'd seen at Heathrow and instructed his long term producer Bob Precht to contact Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager.
On November 11, a deal was struck. The Beatles would make three appearances on the S. Sullivan show in early 1964, for a total of $10,000, roughly equivalent to 100,000 in $2026.
The band's first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show was scheduled for Sunday, February 9, 1964.
But there was one catch.
The Beatles had famously said among themselves that they didn't want to come to America until they scored a number one hit on the American charts.
As soon as the deal was signed with Sullivan, the clock started ticking.
That first bootlegged European import of I Want to hold you'd Hand didn't air on WWDC until a month after the deal was signed. But after the phones lit up, Capitol rushed the release to the day after Christmas, December 26, 1963.
This time, Capitol pulled out all the stops on a nationwide blitz.
The label reportedly spent $50,000 to promote the release through radio, press and teen fan magazines.
By mid January, I Want to hold you'd hand was racing up the charts.
Advanced orders from retail shops ran in the millions.
At the end of January 1964, the Beatles were in Paris completing a residency at the Olympic Theater.
They were relaxing between shows at the Hotel George V on February 1st when Brian Epstein received a telegram with the I want to hold you'd hand had reached number one on both the Billboard and Cashbox charts in the United States.
One week later, on February 9, 1964, more than 70 million people in America sat down in front of their cathode ray tubes to see what all the fuss was about.
As that Sunday's show opened, Ed Sullivan acknowledged what was going to happen.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: You know, something very nice happened and the Beatles got a great kick out of it. We just received a wire they did from Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker wishing them a tremendous success in our country. I think that was very, very nice.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: After a commercial, Sullivan reappeared, all buttoned down and brill creamed to tell the audience.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Now, yesterday and today our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation. And these veterans agree with me. City never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles. Now tonight you're going to twice be entertained by them right now and again in the second half of our show.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: And then to the sound of screams that still ring through the ages.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
[00:08:16] Speaker B: tomorrow I'll miss you.
Remember,
[00:08:25] Speaker A: Near the center of an array of large white arrows converging around the band, the guitar shimmered and the drums crackled and Paul sang and the world shifted on its axis.
The Beatles performed two sets that night. During their second song, the classic ballad Till There Was yous, the camera zoomed in for close ups with the name of each Beatle, Paul, Ringo, George and John, with a parenthetical note for John saying, sorry, girls, he's married.
The first set ended with the crowd pleasing she Loves yous, the Girls Going wild when all four Beatles shook their scandalously long hair on the chorus of and what a Fuss it was.
The total audience for the Beatles US debut on the Ed Sullivan show has been estimated at 73 million, accounting for nearly 40% of the entire US population of 190 million.
The number also represents an astonishing 60% of all the television sets that were turned on that night.
That number means that well over half the households in America were tuned in to See a theater full of teenagers screaming at four boys from Liverpool with floppy haircuts.
Aside from all the screaming, modern mixes show how much jubilant sound these four boys could make with just two guitars, a bass and drums. There's John's jangling rhythms, Paul's throbbing bass, Ringo's steady drums, and George's deft guitar solos.
As they play and sing, they are conscious of which camera has the red light and smile with confident joy at every harmonious note.
And throughout, the cameras cut to shots of teenage girls sighing in disbelief in one moment, screaming with abandon in the next.
At the end of the show, the band returned with I Saw Her Standing There and the chart topper that made their appearance a reality, I want to hold you'd hand Something changed that night, and once again the catalyst was television, a machine that barely existed 20 years before.
The Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan was a defining moment for the post war generation that had been raised in front of the tube.
At the very least, a whole generation of new musicians and rock stars was born that night. Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, Nancy Wilson of Hart and Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss are just a few of the notables from the decades that followed who recalled February 9, 1964 as the defining moment of their Stephen Van Zant, Springsteen's longtime bandmate, has described what a lot of young people experienced that night.
The world changed that day, van Zant said Feb. 9, 1964. There were no bands Feb. 10. Everyone had a band. Everybody's hair suddenly looked very short, everybody's clothes looked very boring, and everybody needed to have a band.
For the less musically inclined among the 70 million plus, like the students who had been sent home from school to watch a week long national funeral just a few months earlier, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan offered something of a respite from their collective trauma.
Their parents, on the other hand, looked at the novel haircuts and heard the unfamiliar sounds and surely wondered what God had wrought.
JFK and the Beatles were back to back events that signaled the passing of one era and the arrival of something entirely new. And as the coming years would prove tumultuous, those years would also deliver some of the most profound and memorable music and art ever written or produced. And much would find its roots in the night. Four boys from Liverpool beamed out from a TV screen singing.
There was no way then to predict what was coming.
Vietnam, campus protests, the continuing civil rights struggle, psychedelia, more assassinations, Woodstock and Watergate.
But in that innocent moment, amid ringing guitars and luminous harmonies, the world was finally getting a clear look at the role that television could play, both in formulating what had arrived and in shaping what would come.
This brings us to the end of number 50 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when the medium becomes the message.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027.
For more, just aim your gizmo to 100yearstv.com this podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Schatzkin, and is a production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
