The Apollo 11 Mission Was Also a Global Media Sensation

Networks in the United States rounded out their coverage with hours of analysis and moon-related entertainment. On ABC, the science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov chatted with Rod Serling, the creator of “The Twilight Zone” television series. The network had also commissioned Duke Ellington to create something new for the occasion. He made his television debut as a vocalist, performing the song he had composed, “Moon Maiden,” live on the air.

Headline writers conveyed the news with attempts at deadline poetry. The Kokomo Tribune, in Indiana, went with “Astronauts Etch Names Beside History’s Great Explorers.” The Oil City Derrick, in Pennsylvania, was more succinct: “Yanks Land on Moon.” The New York Times’s banner headline — the straightforward “Men Walk on Moon” — was set in some of the largest type ever used in the paper.

The coverage of Apollo 11 was subdued in Moscow. “It was not secret, but it was not shown to the public,” Sergei Khrushchev, the son of the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, told Scientific American in 2009.

In the United States, NASA had spent years molding its astronauts into mythic figures, giving Life magazine exclusive access as part of its attempt to shape public opinion. Americans became emotionally invested in the crew members thanks to cover stories documenting the “making of a brave man” and the “inner thoughts and worries” of the spacemen’s wives.

“That had a large effect in showing how big a deal it is to go to space, and it helped to make the astronaut-as-celebrity culture come alive,” Mr. Scott, the author, said. “You’d flip through magazine pages and see Joe DiMaggio, a hero of baseball, and then a few pages later, an astronaut. That’s mythmaking.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/business/media/apollo-11-television-media.html?emc=rss&partner=rss