This really is an important piece of television history. The way the network melded sports, national, and local coverage was stellar. I've seen clips of some of this and clips of ABC 7's coverage, which by itself, was excellent, but this recording shows what the country saw in its entirety. Well done for recording it then, and sharing it now.
I was on the ABC crew at Candlestick Park and you're certainly entitled to compliments for the technical quality of this recording. I've seen parts of this before, but never saw the whole thing from the top... someone made a comment below about Ted Koppel's special report anchor job... an "off the top of his head, from raw sources" from Ted Koppel is always going to be better than a detailed script from almost anyone else. Someone else asked about Emmy Awards.... yes, we all did. This is tough to describe without photos, but my rental car was damaged by the crowd rushing out of Candlestick once the game postponement was announced. I told Hertz it was "earthquake damage."
Oof, that cut away when the earthquake happens still gives me chills. I was six, and me, my grandmother and mom were watching this live. My aunt lived in Santa Cruz at the time, and my grandmother FREAKED OUT when the feed cut. She spent the next hour trying to call out to my aunt unsuccessfully. When they started saying that the epicenter was IN Santa Cruz, they sent me to bed, but I couldn't sleep and heard my grandmother still attempting to phone my aunt for HOURS. My aunt and cousin turned out fine, but their house pretty much had it. Scary stuff, but thanks for posting this! It's a piece of history!
I've never understood why, when archive footage is shown TV, it looks like it was beamed in from Pluto. I'm not even sure how one goes about making something look that bad.
@@VPR2BI’m not a expert on tv footage engineering but I think they don’t have a system in place to keep the quality of the original tape reel to a digital upload conversion. You have a really good if not the best software to convert from tape reels in its original quality right as if your watching on a 4:3 tube tv BTW im 29 but I kind of miss watching tv on a smaller Sayno of Zenith tv lol.
@@robertmusgrave9236 Thanks for the compliment! In my experience, to properly preserve analog video starts with a good eye. You've got to be able to LOOK at the video at every stage of the process and determine whether or not it has been degraded in some way, and if so, figure out how to avoid that from happening. Sadly, most people doing this kind of work assume that analog video is "bad," so if the result of their work looks crummy, they just shrug and say "well, it's analog." My goal has always been to preserve ALL of the quality from the source tape.
@@VPR2B Because back then, please used "slow play" on VHS tape when they recorded stuff in order to fit more on a tape (and thus, save money) and although it allowed you to squeeze more on to one tape, the quality suffered.
@@rustyshackleford1114 That's certainly true -- SLP/EP was to avoided like the plague as it looked terrible. Ironically though, this particular recording *was* done at EP, as I wasn't at home and it was the only way I could set up a recording of the full World Series game -- but it was on S-VHS tape, not VHS, so it fared quite a bit better.
I was 10, getting my haircut in Walnut Creek, and remember the glass windows bowing and flexing - it was surreal. The haircut was concluded the next day.
I was 11 in my bedroom in Walnut Creek and I remember the ground feel like it was rolling intensely and my cat going nuts. We lost power until the next day so I never saw all these news reports!
Thank you for posting! I remember watching KOVR in Sacramento (they were the abc affiliate at that time) when the quake happened; I remember they showed a bit of Roseanne and then cut to local coverage. This is the first time I’ve seen what the network did.
I remember the quake and my mom was watching the TV, I was going to college at the time and when mom said that the World Serecy was off the air and could I find out what was going on, so I went out to my car and tried to get the radio station that I listened to and I couldn't even get that. But soon we heard that there had been an earthquake and we started watching the news. Love from Marysville, California
I'm proud to be a descendant of not one but two survivors of Loma Prieta. Long story short, my parents who were only dating at the time were at their homes at San Mateo and Hayward getting ready for date night when the earthquake struck.
@@wewantthecup Ha Ha No. I was born after that. I just know Loma Prieta based on the stories my mom and dad told me since they both survived the earthquake that day, and also from what I learned about Earthquakes in Earth Science class back when I was in high school. Plus I was born in the Bay Area.
35 years ago today. Thank you for uploading this footage! The quality is so sublime that I would have been fooled if you told me it came straight from the studio.
0:01 Telecast starts 4:47 Earthquake occurs; video transmission gets knocked out as a result but audio remains. A simple green ABC bumper card saying “WORLD SERIES” is shown when the game’s commentators (Tim McCarver and Al Michaels) inform us of the earthquake via phone audio. 8:26 the bumper card returns, then cut to Roseanne in progress 10:38 Onscreen update on the earthquake-affected game by a network announcer during Roseanne. 11:02 First special report cut-in, then another appearance of the bumper card with the same network announcer from 10:38 giving another update. 16:44 second special report cut-in, yet another network announcer update accompanied with the bumper card. 32:22 third special report, this time with an update that the game and its telecast have been postponed. The network sticks with live coverage of the aftermath for the remainder of the recording
Reminds me of the 72 Olympics, when Jim McKay and the rest of ABC Sports switched from sports commentary to news reporting during the kidnapping of the Israeli athletes in Munich.
I can’t remember when I took mine down - actually had TWO for a while. Wish I’d kept one, but when everything went digital, I didn’t think it would ever be of use again. D’oh! I’m back in the game a little bit now, with a small Ku dish.
I remember watching Game 3 on my B&W Montgomery Ward TV here in Dallas, then all heck broke loose on air. We went into the family room and turned on CNN to watch it all unfold. Thank you for posting this!!!
I will always remember October 17, 1989 not just because of the earthquake, and not just because it happened before the start of the WS, but mainly because it happened on my brother and my uncle's birthday! We live in the central valley town of Modesto, CA. We were supposed to get together at my Aunt's house that day for their birthday party. My dad was watching the WS introduction while my mother was in the restroom getting herself ready. My brother was walking around the house. My mother told me to go look for a t shirt that she was going to wear in her closet. Then all of a sudden I hear my mother shouting at the top of her lungs "EARTHQUAKE!" I didn't feel the earthquake immediately nor did I see anything move that made me think there was an earthquake because her closet was so cluttered. My parents also had a waterbed when I was young and when I turned around and looked at their waterbed, I can see it waving back and forth. And that's when I realized that there was an earthquake happening! As my mother continued to shout "earthquake," the tv and power went out. The phone lines went dead. We felt the floor shake. A cabinet they had in the kitchen was rocking back and forth but thankfully it did not tip over and spilled a lot of miniature statues that they had. Luckily there was no major damage to the house. We went straight to my Aunt's and Uncle's house. Their power was out as well. Didn't come back on til almost 2 hrs later. I assumed that's when the power came back on my parents house as well. It was something that my family and I will never forget. Thank you for posting this video!
Back in those days Ted Koppel was the anchor for the ABC News program “Nightline” which ran (at least on the East Coast) from 11:30 PM until midnight, following local news. That program originally began as a series of nightly special reports when Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking several dozen hostages. After the hostages returned home, ABC decided to continue the program, usually focusing on a single story, with a half-hour long report that you couldn’t do on a nightly newscast. Koppel, in my opinion, was the best at it, and was likely the best television journalist since Walter Cronkite retired. He was excellent at digging into the details of a story, and was an excellent interviewer, as one can see here, anchoring reports from various sources, and being very careful clarifying whether or not reports are confirmed. It was a difficult juggling act, and he was a master at keeping calm and professional, even polite when he needed to interrupt a reporter or guest. He was a master at it. He was likely preparing for that evening’s program when this happened, because he was anchoring from his Nightline set. So he was right where he needed to be to anchor this tragic incident. It’s rare to find this kind of single issue focus given so much time, as networks were severely scaling back their news budgets, and his shows had on experts, not pundits yelling talking points at each other, as one so often sees in modern cable news outlets. He was always firmly in control, and I cannot remember him ever revealing his political views. He asked fair questions, but wasn’t afraid of asking tough questions. He was (still alive, but retired since 2005) the best tv journalist I ever saw (Ed Murrow was before my time).
I was a 9 year old kid living in Brooklyn, NY, and just loved baseball enough to want to watch the World Series. I initially thought nothing of it when the tv signal went dead. When I realized what had happened a few minutes in, I was glued to the tv still hoping to see a game that night, but became increasingly interested in the Special Report. This was the event that as a kid got me interested in all kinds of natural disasters.
Probably as clear as the day it aired. Makes a little more sense watching this why the green “World Series” screen features so prominently in my memory of that broadcast. I had forgotten it popped up multiple times as ABC switched back and forth between news/the game and regular programming.
Thank you so much for sharing this. The quality of consumer level recording is superb. Then again, you had the best possible scenario for the time, direct C-Band feed recorded on S-VHS. What a historical gem!
I was 19 at the time.. in Union City at work at an after school day care program. I just remember sitting outside in the teacher parking lot, staying away from the building and riding out the aftershocks.. The kids (8 of them) were great and very well behaved. I just remember telling them, as we were hiding under a table, that they could pretend we were on a really rocky boat. The shaking seemed to last so long and it was so violent. It was a crazy time. Something I'll never forget. It was actually a 6.9. :O
In 89 I lived in the East Bay (Fremont) sitting at a red light when it hit, my truck was rolling I jump out and looked back and I could see the sidewalks and asphalt road moving like waves of water going south to north away from me very fast. I will never forget that day.
I've lived on the east coast my entire life and lived through blizzards, floods, ice storms, and even saw a couple fairly nearby freak tornadoes roll through,... you name it... other than an out of control wildfire or a severe earthquake; but I cannot imagine what a severe earthquake must be like and nor do I ever want to experience one. You could be outside standing on the ground not even near anything that could fall on you and still lose your life in an instant. If that isn't enough to scare the bejesus out of anybody, I can't imagine what is.
I was in San Pablo/Richmond (bay area) and the streets were literally like ocean waves. It was wild. We had a raised deck on our house in the canyon hills, and it was heavily damaged. I was 13, and we sat so scared waiting for my dad to arrive as he drove that freeway daily to get home
My husband and I were 20 and 22 respectively, working at the same tile warehouse in north San Jose, just south of Milpitas. My husband had a radio walkman so started listening to the local radio reports immediately. We knew about the Cypress structure collapse within minutes; there was one brief shot of it early in this coverage but no one remarked on it, and haven't yet (I'm at about 1 hour 45 minutes as I write this). It was that news that truly struck us and told us, this was a major earthquake and things would never be quite the same again. It took us over two hours to reach our home in South San Jose, taking surface streets. The most eerie drive we've ever had; the streets were packed but totally silent, and no traffic lights.
I was at work at a cement making factory right on San Leandro Blvd close to the Oakland Coliseum when the quake hit..I was unloading a double flatbed truck full (18 pallets) of bagged cement ,each pallet weighed at least 2,200 pounds and I just took two pallets off with my forklift when it hit..I thought I let the load down too fast so I took my hands off the control to see and I looked back and saw the bed of the truck bounced from side to side kicking up dust from the tires…I remember like it was 5 minutes ago that I thought “THIS IS THE END”…I thought the world was trying to turn upside down..hard to explain if you didn’t fell it..for a split second ,I thought that death is near and this is how I’m going out…just insane!!
The likelihood is that Seattle/Tacoma will be struck by an earthquake in the next 20 years. A magnitude 7 earthquake on the Seattle Fault (the SF earthquake depicted here was 6.9) would damage approximately 80 bridges in the Seattle-Tacoma area with a 42 ft tsunami wave to occur within minutes of the quake. They estimate that the economic damage to the area would start at $4 billion dollars
I've said it before when I saw the coverage on another youtbe channel and Ill say it again, Al Michaels was the MVP that night with how smoothly he went from calling the game for ABC sports to being a temporary correspondent for ABC News.
The 72 Olympics gave him some training with how Jim McKay handled it and I’m sure whatever game broadcast he did that a what if tragedy was always on the back of his mind.
The MVPs were the local news anchors out of SF that everyone just showed them in action and let them take over with the reporting..Tthey did a great job and were under those lights for over 24 hours straight.
I would say that Al Michaels did an excellent job as a reporter, but the real anchor was Ted Koppel, who, in my opinion, was the best television journalist of his era, and was the main anchor of “Nightline” from late 1979 through 2005. That show originated as special reports covering the hostage crisis in Iran, and was so good that they just continued the program, almost always just focusing on one story from the day.
This is the first time I've actually seen any live footage of this, but the moment where the earthquake began scrambling the broadcast was kinda scary to experience.
The eerie part is how, as Al Micheales co-anchor is talking about Dave Parkers hit, you can hear the crowd noise getting louder and louder in the background.
I wasn’t born when this happened… but to see this in real time, it gives me CHILLS of the moments from the beginning of the coverage to where it became so apparent
I was 12 yrs old when the quake occurred, shopping in the back of a supermarket when it started shaking violently and the all the lights turned off. 15 seconds seemed like a lifetime and I really thought the ground was going to open up and that I would die as I held onto the cheese display. We didn't know the extent of the damages around the Bay Area for hours as the power didn't come back on for a while. Ironically I was in LA for the 1994 Northridge quake and I'll never forget how scary both were.
God bless you, @kristinelai, for having to go through two earthquakes in a span of 5 years. The scary thing about these earthquakes is the aftershocks. It comforts me to know that you and a lot of people survived a terrifying experience.🙏😥🇺🇲
@@survivor5044 Thank you! Yes the aftershocks are more nerve-wracking and sometimes even deadlier. I recall "Lucky Buck" was found alive days after the quake - in his car smashed under the collapsed freeway in Oakland. Sadly he died months later from his injuries. I often think of those who weren't as fortunate and who maybe have suffered for days before being found :(
@@VPR2B wow! Most of my VHS are dead. This is top notch quality indeed 😺👍 plus, most recordings of that day were directly from the ABC's World Series and not from another affiliate like your video so it's super interesting to see how it was transmitted by interrupting normal programming. Thanks again for sharing this! ✨😺
@@minakomel Thanks! I still have one working machine -- a JVC HR-S9600U -- but I've completed capturing all my tapes, so it's taking a break right now.
What state are you from if I may ask when you were recording this? And which ABC satellite affiliate did you get? We had cable, so our local ABC affiliate was from Portland, Oregon. I was 8 when this happened and my family were shocked and horrified when we saw the events unfold, when we thought we were gonna watch the WS. My mom made a lot of prayers that evening for a lot of families and people down there
I'm in California, but I didn't record this off a local ABC affiliate -- I had a large 10-foot backyard dish and was receiving the ABC satellite feed that blanketed the entire continental US. The feed was intended for reception by local affiliates, but anyone with a suitable dish could also tune in.
I was 9 years old watching the World Series with the babysitter and my younger brother in Ogden, Utah when this happened. It was pretty scary for us to see everything. My parents came home after their dinner out and watched the rest of this unfold. The restaurant they were at showed the opening of the game. I stayed up all night alone watching the local Salt Lake ABC affiliate so all of this video brings back memories. Later on that night KSL local CBS affiliate did a segment about our possibilities of having a quake on the Wasatch front which was scary for me at the time. 😂
Thanks for this very interesting to watch. Took them a long time to realize it was double decker highway that had collapsed onto itself. I know where I live in Seattle there was major concern about our own double decker. Which was eventually proven correct when it also received damage in an earthquake in 2001, though thankfully not enough to collapse. Still even though every engineer said it would never survive another earthquake they kept it open for nearly 20 more years until they finally built a replacement tunnel in 2019. Amazingly all the construction actually made my commute better, as it scarred everyone away from the waterfront for a good 2 years or so. :)
I remember watching non-stop and they pivoted from saying that highway buckled to saying it collapsed onto itself.i turned to my folks and that this just got really bad. Worst disaster I saw in the country until I had the misfortune to be in the WTC on 9/11.
I can't believe the total lack of coverage and absolute silence about the collapse of so much of the upper deck of the Cyprus Freeway that there was video footage of shot by a helicopter from nearly the beginning of the all of the immediate post-earthquake video that there was film of. It was 14 city blocks of the highway that collapsed and the scene of the greatest number of deaths of people that were in the earthquake. I remember that night as clear as yesterday but never realized until I just saw this now 34+ years later that so much of the upper deck collapsed on to the lower deck of the freeway and the the collapsed distance went on so far and was so catastrophic.
@@BPlantyPNWThey didn’t understand. Looking at the early footage, you couldn’t tell that it was the pancaking of one level onto the one below. No one realized that there were lost souls crushed in there; such a horrific tragedy.
This broadcast is historical, even to one not in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was at my grandma's house at the time, my parents ready to take me home, when coverage of the quake, perhaps this very newscast preserved here, was on the TV. Here is where I got a literal real-life crash course on the concept of... TIME ZONES! Namely the West Coast is three hours behind us on the East Coast. (I lived in Long Island, NY at the time, and am now stuck in FL, plus the only timezone I've been in is EST...)
@@VPR2B ooh- The length of this thing alone makes me wonder if you had two SVHS decks, for tape change compensation. I mean you couldn't record six hours in Standard Play in those days...
@@JFD62780 Believe it not, this was recorded at EP, though since it’s S-VHS, it looks a lot better than regular VHS at that speed. I normally NEVER used that mode, but I wasn’t home and wanted to record the entire game, so that was my only option.
I watched this live way down in San Diego and knew exactly what happened, my mom was living in Los Altos and a curio cabinet filled with crystal was all knocked over, pantry tossed with bottles of sticky condiments and wine as well as her TV ending up in the middle of the living room. I remember watching the initial footage of the collapsed double decker highway in Oakland and realizing its complete pancaking collapse and astounded that Ted Koppel or other newscasters initially not aware as to what they were looking at, dozens died there.
I was 26, living and working in SF in 1989. When the quake hit, I was still at work trying to finish some projects before heading home. A lot of folks had left early to go to or go watch the game, so not many of us were still in the building, which was downtown. I’ve lived in CA all my life, and I’ve never felt a quake like that before or since. We were evacuated from the building and walked out onto the street, not knowing what was going on with the Bay Bridge and Cypress Freeway or the Marina until we came across a guy with a small portable TV. It was so eerie. All the traffic lights were out, so getting home took a while, and the power at my flat didn’t come back until the next evening.
I live in Santa Monica California (Los Angeles County) used to live in San Francisco. My house is new and built to current earthquake codes for California and the office I work in has been retrofitted to current California earthquake codes. I have a storm shelter with a month’s worth of food and supplies in the case of an actual earthquake emergency. I forgot to add the biggest earthquake I was in: Loma Prieta in San Francisco October 17th 1989. I was at the A’s-Giants World Series game! 15 seconds of pure adrenaline and fear! I’m glad I wasn’t on the Bay Bridge and especially not on the Cypress Expressway!
I was in San Francisco when this happened. Three days without power, hearing about the fire, the collapsed freeway and spending time with a friend and his family.
October 17, 1989. 5:04pm. I remember like it was yesterday. I was living in Daly City with my mom, she worked downtown SF at the post office. Took her 7 hours to get home. I had just got home and I was getting ready to watch Dance Party USA! I went to open the window cause it was hot and stuffy in the apartment. By the time I turned around, the quake started. I was scared, but calm thinking it was a usual small California earthquake. But it kept going and got immediately stronger, Stuff started flying off the shelves and I just stood there, with my fingers in my ears. Don't know why, just what I did when I was scared. Then the power went out, then it stopped. I was a senior at Westmoor Highschool and my friend lived right across the street. I went right over and stayed until my mom got home. She knew exactly where I was too, came right over and got me, not surprised I wasn't there. I couldn't sleep for days.
I was 8 years old on this day, living in a suburb of Oakland, and seeing this brings back both the bad memories and the good. The baseball fan in me was so happy about the series, too. Whatever happened, my two local teams were going to be #1 and #2. We'd win either way.
9/11 was like pretty like this as well cell phones were in use but the technology used in them was analog and they all crashed and went down in lots of places right after it happened especially in New York which was understandable.
what was cool about the local coverage is that the KGO logo could be seen 'under' the ABC coverage when the sat went out briefly. BTW, cool username. :)
Thank you for posting such a high quality video from 35 years ago. It's like going back into a time machine all over again. God bless everyone that were witnesses to something so frightening.🇺🇲😥🙏
Really interesting: thanks for posting. Question for anyone who knows about broadcasting: they joined the Roseanne rerun already in progress rather than starting it from the beginning. Do networks keep an alternate show running in case of an unforeseen technical difficulty like this?
In those days, yes, especially in a high-profile broadcast such as this. Anything can happen at any time, and in this case it did. It's easier these days when all video is run from servers -- very easy to simple have a second list that's playing alternate programming. We even used to do that at the local station, if the risk was deemed great enough.
It also may have been intended for West Coast primetime that night originally, too. Two days earlier, an episode of _Life Goes On_ was paired with the second game of the Series. It aired before the game in the Eastern and Central Time Zones and served as the lead-out show after the game for the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones on ABC. It's similar to how _MacGyver_ would always air after _Monday Night Football_ from September to December on the West Coast. With the game having been scheduled to take up a minimum of three hours if it had been played, ABC would have needed other programming to air for the West Coast after the game.
This had to have been one of the shining moments of Al Michaels career. Right up there with his Miracle On Ice shouts. I saw an interview with Al later about this coverage and the host was amazed at this smooth and calm he was during this coverage because Al covers sports and not hard news. Al pointed out that, as a sports reporter, he had to cover breaking news live all the time during the games. Good point!
The fun begins at 4:38 I remember watching this coverage while I was doing my homework back in 8th grade. I lived in the Eastern time zone at the time. I remember falling asleep listening to it.
I was 3 years old lol. I was with my mom in the Century grocery store off MacArthur in Oakland. Wine bottles falling and crashing and everything was very loud and chaotic. My dad worked for Caltrans and was pretty much gone for 2 months working in the recovery/clearing effort at the Cypress freeway collapse. I remember after the quake and before the complete demolition of the freeway you could see sections still standing but didn't connect to any other structure. For a while I had nightmares where my mom and I would be driving on the freeway and abruptly just drive off the edge.
How traumatic for those workers who had to remove the wreckage and victims from the Cypress collapse. I hope your dad and others were able to get counseling.
Interesting side note to see all the comments about how spoiled we are by high quality video and that this becomes a main talking point about a tape (literally) from the late 1980's. I see it more as nostalgic for the days before the internet and particularly the poison of 24 hour news, cell phones and social media. Not all technology is entirely progress nor exclusively positive.
Nice to see this in good quality, though I can see some static from the satellite reception which was common with that. I taped a few minutes of KTVU just coming back on the air then, have it uploaded here but need to redo it in the right frame rate. On the 2nd VCR I taped KRON but that tape needs to be found. They were in a dark studio putting microphones up to a radio reporting what was going on.
It’s weird to watch this. I grew up in Berkeley and was watching the game with my dad. Never actually saw this broadcast because we were all in the street. We did listen to the radio. My house and our neighborhood were all fine. Just terrifying. But I remember in the coming days watching in horror at what people went through. Side note. I am a huge Oakland A”s fan. I am devastated that they are moving 😢
I was at work in Burlingame, near Candlestick Park. I lived in Oakland and could not get to my home for 3 days. Drive from Burlingame to downtown San Francisco and then to a friends house to stay. Aftershocks for weeks. I’ll never forget it.
I was only 7 when this happened. I remember my dad getting ready to watch the game when this happened. I live on the east coast and I did not watch the news coverage. I’m not a baseball fan, but before making this post, I sat and watched this whole video from start to finish. This video is historic and the quality looks like something happening live.
I remember watching this like it was yesterday. I had a cousin living in San Francisco at the time. In the age before cell phones, it was two days before we heard from him. He packed up his stuff and moved back to Louisiana the following month. He rather deal with hurricanes than earthquakes.
Thanks for sharing that! Wondering if you can tell me how you became aware of this clip? Over the past few days I’ve started receiving endless comments on it, which leads to me believe it’s been publicized somewhere.
@@VPR2B It showed up on my recommended. I am bit of an old news hound, though, and like watching old news clips so I guess it was recommended to me due to my search history.
They still have not shown the Nimitz Freeway (the one that collapsed). After the quake, we were all joking and laughing, but it was just nervous energy which comes with experiencing a quake. When the pictures of the collapsed freeway came through, we went from smiles to tears literally--it was not funny anymore. One friend just sat down and cried.
Wow. This is the cleanest video an average home viewer could ever get: full line resolution from C-Band, recording on S-VHS
the quality looks like its from the early 2000s
@@Tom-TV-vl4to Every VHS video is supposed to look like that. I have some cassettes from 80s in good quality also look like that.
@@k.cooper8816 You do not have ANY VHS videos that look as good as this. You obviously don't understand what C-Band sat + S-VHS video deliver.
@@k.cooper8816 Liar. DIAF
@@k.cooper8816 oh he lying?
Wow, this is probably the best quality copy of this I've ever seen.
Thanks for the compliment!
Without a doubt!
100%
A stunningly clean copy of this event . Incredible for 1989 .. Kudos
This really is an important piece of television history. The way the network melded sports, national, and local coverage was stellar. I've seen clips of some of this and clips of ABC 7's coverage, which by itself, was excellent, but this recording shows what the country saw in its entirety. Well done for recording it then, and sharing it now.
I found this today in the wake of yesterday being the 35th anniversary of this famous broadcast...
It’s considered the most captured earthquake on earth!
I was on the ABC crew at Candlestick Park and you're certainly entitled to compliments for the technical quality of this recording. I've seen parts of this before, but never saw the whole thing from the top... someone made a comment below about Ted Koppel's special report anchor job... an "off the top of his head, from raw sources" from Ted Koppel is always going to be better than a detailed script from almost anyone else. Someone else asked about Emmy Awards.... yes, we all did.
This is tough to describe without photos, but my rental car was damaged by the crowd rushing out of Candlestick once the game postponement was announced. I told Hertz it was "earthquake damage."
Oof, that cut away when the earthquake happens still gives me chills. I was six, and me, my grandmother and mom were watching this live. My aunt lived in Santa Cruz at the time, and my grandmother FREAKED OUT when the feed cut. She spent the next hour trying to call out to my aunt unsuccessfully. When they started saying that the epicenter was IN Santa Cruz, they sent me to bed, but I couldn't sleep and heard my grandmother still attempting to phone my aunt for HOURS.
My aunt and cousin turned out fine, but their house pretty much had it. Scary stuff, but thanks for posting this! It's a piece of history!
Yeah, no matter how many times I watch it, the moment when the feed is lost sends a chill down my spine!
Never has a live news report from 1989 ever looked so crystal clear. Wow nice work
I've never understood why, when archive footage is shown TV, it looks like it was beamed in from Pluto. I'm not even sure how one goes about making something look that bad.
@@VPR2BI’m not a expert on tv footage engineering but I think they don’t have a system in place to keep the quality of the original tape reel to a digital upload conversion. You have a really good if not the best software to convert from tape reels in its original quality right as if your watching on a 4:3 tube tv BTW im 29 but I kind of miss watching tv on a smaller Sayno of Zenith tv lol.
@@robertmusgrave9236 Thanks for the compliment! In my experience, to properly preserve analog video starts with a good eye. You've got to be able to LOOK at the video at every stage of the process and determine whether or not it has been degraded in some way, and if so, figure out how to avoid that from happening. Sadly, most people doing this kind of work assume that analog video is "bad," so if the result of their work looks crummy, they just shrug and say "well, it's analog." My goal has always been to preserve ALL of the quality from the source tape.
@@VPR2B Because back then, please used "slow play" on VHS tape when they recorded stuff in order to fit more on a tape (and thus, save money) and although it allowed you to squeeze more on to one tape, the quality suffered.
@@rustyshackleford1114 That's certainly true -- SLP/EP was to avoided like the plague as it looked terrible. Ironically though, this particular recording *was* done at EP, as I wasn't at home and it was the only way I could set up a recording of the full World Series game -- but it was on S-VHS tape, not VHS, so it fared quite a bit better.
I was 10, getting my haircut in Walnut Creek, and remember the glass windows bowing and flexing - it was surreal. The haircut was concluded the next day.
I was 11 in my bedroom in Walnut Creek and I remember the ground feel like it was rolling intensely and my cat going nuts. We lost power until the next day so I never saw all these news reports!
The thing that strikes me about watching this was the excellence of Al Michaels shifting from sportscaster to news anchor.
Well I think he learned from Jim McKay when he covered the tragedy in the 72 Olympics.
Thank you for posting! I remember watching KOVR in Sacramento (they were the abc affiliate at that time) when the quake happened; I remember they showed a bit of Roseanne and then cut to local coverage. This is the first time I’ve seen what the network did.
Yes I seen airchecks where KOVR had to go to local news on parts of the Loma Prieta coverage.
I remember the quake and my mom was watching the TV, I was going to college at the time and when mom said that the World Serecy was off the air and could I find out what was going on, so I went out to my car and tried to get the radio station that I listened to and I couldn't even get that. But soon we heard that there had been an earthquake and we started watching the news. Love from Marysville, California
Only know quake that shoot the state capital.
@@cabalenproductions6480Any links?
Ah I remember KOVR! I grew up in Citrus Heights!
I'm proud to be a descendant of not one but two survivors of Loma Prieta. Long story short, my parents who were only dating at the time were at their homes at San Mateo and Hayward getting ready for date night when the earthquake struck.
4:42
@@zanemarte9877 I remember watching it in Orlando, FL. Right when that guy slides in to 2nd was when it began to hit.
Amazing
Were you by chance born in July, 1990? 😂
@@wewantthecup Ha Ha No.
I was born after that. I just know Loma Prieta based on the stories my mom and dad told me since they both survived the earthquake that day, and also from what I learned about Earthquakes in Earth Science class back when I was in high school. Plus I was born in the Bay Area.
35 years ago today. Thank you for uploading this footage! The quality is so sublime that I would have been fooled if you told me it came straight from the studio.
That’s what I thought initially as soon as it started! “Oh wow someone uploaded a quad tape”
The cut at “I’ll tell you what, we’re having an earth-“ honestly still creeps me out
0:01 Telecast starts
4:47 Earthquake occurs; video transmission gets knocked out as a result but audio remains. A simple green ABC bumper card saying “WORLD SERIES” is shown when the game’s commentators (Tim McCarver and Al Michaels) inform us of the earthquake via phone audio.
8:26 the bumper card returns, then cut to Roseanne in progress
10:38 Onscreen update on the earthquake-affected game by a network announcer during Roseanne.
11:02 First special report cut-in, then another appearance of the bumper card with the same network announcer from 10:38 giving another update.
16:44 second special report cut-in, yet another network announcer update accompanied with the bumper card.
32:22 third special report, this time with an update that the game and its telecast have been postponed. The network sticks with live coverage of the aftermath for the remainder of the recording
Such a clear tape
I guess Roseanne hated being upstaged by baseball.
I blame Roseanne for the quake.
4:47 is when ABC takes the QKT Phone Line to air. It's a fancy way of saying Program Audio over the Telephone.
looks like someone was dedicated to having the best equipment to watch/record tv
Always!
@@VPR2B i love it, full svhs hifi recording of abc news coverage recieved from a 10 foot home dish
I heard that ABC Sports won an Emmy for their coverage of the Loma Prieta Earthquake.
Holy cow. This is your best upload yet, keep it coming!
al micheals did a wonderful job so smoothly from a sports announcer to a newscaster that quick very professional
Reminds me of the 72 Olympics, when Jim McKay and the rest of ABC Sports switched from sports commentary to news reporting during the kidnapping of the Israeli athletes in Munich.
What gets lost in everything that happened is how epic that opening was. I remember watching this live.
@VPR2B this is amazing. I have had a C-Band dish since 2000 so I missed the analog heyday. For you to have taped it on S-VHS my hat is off to you!
I can’t remember when I took mine down - actually had TWO for a while. Wish I’d kept one, but when everything went digital, I didn’t think it would ever be of use again. D’oh! I’m back in the game a little bit now, with a small Ku dish.
I remember watching Game 3 on my B&W Montgomery Ward TV here in Dallas, then all heck broke loose on air. We went into the family room and turned on CNN to watch it all unfold. Thank you for posting this!!!
I will always remember October 17, 1989 not just because of the earthquake, and not just because it happened before the start of the WS, but mainly because it happened on my brother and my uncle's birthday! We live in the central valley town of Modesto, CA. We were supposed to get together at my Aunt's house that day for their birthday party. My dad was watching the WS introduction while my mother was in the restroom getting herself ready. My brother was walking around the house. My mother told me to go look for a t shirt that she was going to wear in her closet. Then all of a sudden I hear my mother shouting at the top of her lungs "EARTHQUAKE!" I didn't feel the earthquake immediately nor did I see anything move that made me think there was an earthquake because her closet was so cluttered. My parents also had a waterbed when I was young and when I turned around and looked at their waterbed, I can see it waving back and forth. And that's when I realized that there was an earthquake happening! As my mother continued to shout "earthquake," the tv and power went out. The phone lines went dead. We felt the floor shake. A cabinet they had in the kitchen was rocking back and forth but thankfully it did not tip over and spilled a lot of miniature statues that they had. Luckily there was no major damage to the house. We went straight to my Aunt's and Uncle's house. Their power was out as well. Didn't come back on til almost 2 hrs later. I assumed that's when the power came back on my parents house as well. It was something that my family and I will never forget. Thank you for posting this video!
Damn, never thought I'd see this. Good quality, too.
28:00 This is from the waning days of the network having a live booth announcer on duty.
Back in those days Ted Koppel was the anchor for the ABC News program “Nightline” which ran (at least on the East Coast) from 11:30 PM until midnight, following local news. That program originally began as a series of nightly special reports when Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking several dozen hostages.
After the hostages returned home, ABC decided to continue the program, usually focusing on a single story, with a half-hour long report that you couldn’t do on a nightly newscast. Koppel, in my opinion, was the best at it, and was likely the best television journalist since Walter Cronkite retired. He was excellent at digging into the details of a story, and was an excellent interviewer, as one can see here, anchoring reports from various sources, and being very careful clarifying whether or not reports are confirmed. It was a difficult juggling act, and he was a master at keeping calm and professional, even polite when he needed to interrupt a reporter or guest. He was a master at it.
He was likely preparing for that evening’s program when this happened, because he was anchoring from his Nightline set. So he was right where he needed to be to anchor this tragic incident. It’s rare to find this kind of single issue focus given so much time, as networks were severely scaling back their news budgets, and his shows had on experts, not pundits yelling talking points at each other, as one so often sees in modern cable news outlets.
He was always firmly in control, and I cannot remember him ever revealing his political views. He asked fair questions, but wasn’t afraid of asking tough questions. He was (still alive, but retired since 2005) the best tv journalist I ever saw (Ed Murrow was before my time).
I remember switching to CNN because ABC kept cutting away.
I was a 9 year old kid living in Brooklyn, NY, and just loved baseball enough to want to watch the World Series. I initially thought nothing of it when the tv signal went dead. When I realized what had happened a few minutes in, I was glued to the tv still hoping to see a game that night, but became increasingly interested in the Special Report. This was the event that as a kid got me interested in all kinds of natural disasters.
Probably as clear as the day it aired. Makes a little more sense watching this why the green “World Series” screen features so prominently in my memory of that broadcast. I had forgotten it popped up multiple times as ABC switched back and forth between news/the game and regular programming.
This. This is why I come back to RUclips. Thank you for the post.
Thank you so much for sharing this.
The quality of consumer level recording is superb. Then again, you had the best possible scenario for the time, direct C-Band feed recorded on S-VHS.
What a historical gem!
I was 19 at the time.. in Union City at work at an after school day care program. I just remember sitting outside in the teacher parking lot, staying away from the building and riding out the aftershocks.. The kids (8 of them) were great and very well behaved. I just remember telling them, as we were hiding under a table, that they could pretend we were on a really rocky boat. The shaking seemed to last so long and it was so violent. It was a crazy time. Something I'll never forget. It was actually a 6.9. :O
In 89 I lived in the East Bay (Fremont) sitting at a red light when it hit, my truck was rolling I jump out and looked back and I could see the sidewalks and asphalt road moving like waves of water going south to north away from me very fast.
I will never forget that day.
😂 try explaining that to people and they just can't imagine such a thing, but I saw it myself.
I've lived on the east coast my entire life and lived through blizzards, floods, ice storms, and even saw a couple fairly nearby freak tornadoes roll through,... you name it... other than an out of control wildfire or a severe earthquake; but I cannot imagine what a severe earthquake must be like and nor do I ever want to experience one. You could be outside standing on the ground not even near anything that could fall on you and still lose your life in an instant. If that isn't enough to scare the bejesus out of anybody, I can't imagine what is.
@@bblegacy It's like the guy said. Like your on a boat but it's not a boat 😳
I was in San Pablo/Richmond (bay area) and the streets were literally like ocean waves. It was wild. We had a raised deck on our house in the canyon hills, and it was heavily damaged. I was 13, and we sat so scared waiting for my dad to arrive as he drove that freeway daily to get home
@@BPlantyPNW hope your dad was safe that day we will never forget.
My husband and I were 20 and 22 respectively, working at the same tile warehouse in north San Jose, just south of Milpitas. My husband had a radio walkman so started listening to the local radio reports immediately. We knew about the Cypress structure collapse within minutes; there was one brief shot of it early in this coverage but no one remarked on it, and haven't yet (I'm at about 1 hour 45 minutes as I write this). It was that news that truly struck us and told us, this was a major earthquake and things would never be quite the same again. It took us over two hours to reach our home in South San Jose, taking surface streets. The most eerie drive we've ever had; the streets were packed but totally silent, and no traffic lights.
I was at work at a cement making factory right on San Leandro Blvd close to the Oakland Coliseum when the quake hit..I was unloading a double flatbed truck full (18 pallets) of bagged cement ,each pallet weighed at least 2,200 pounds and I just took two pallets off with my forklift when it hit..I thought I let the load down too fast so I took my hands off the control to see and I looked back and saw the bed of the truck bounced from side to side kicking up dust from the tires…I remember like it was 5 minutes ago that I thought “THIS IS THE END”…I thought the world was trying to turn upside down..hard to explain if you didn’t fell it..for a split second ,I thought that death is near and this is how I’m going out…just insane!!
WOW! That is intense! Thanks for sharing your story.
RIP Tim McCarver.
Did he die in the earthquake?
@@afridgetoofar1818 No, he passed away in 2023.
@@IAmNotAFunguy the 2023 earthquake?
Commander Nelson passed away 6 months later in a motorcycle accident, thank you for your service and your heroic actions on this day!!
@@afridgetoofar1818 that's not how he passed away for....heart failure is the cause of it.
The likelihood is that Seattle/Tacoma will be struck by an earthquake in the next 20 years. A magnitude 7 earthquake on the Seattle Fault (the SF earthquake depicted here was 6.9) would damage approximately 80 bridges in the Seattle-Tacoma area with a 42 ft tsunami wave to occur within minutes of the quake. They estimate that the economic damage to the area would start at $4 billion dollars
With the Pre-Recorded Opening with James Earl Jones - Rest in peace
I've said it before when I saw the coverage on another youtbe channel and Ill say it again, Al Michaels was the MVP that night with how smoothly he went from calling the game for ABC sports to being a temporary correspondent for ABC News.
The 72 Olympics gave him some training with how Jim McKay handled it and I’m sure whatever game broadcast he did that a what if tragedy was always on the back of his mind.
The MVPs were the local news anchors out of SF that everyone just showed them in action and let them take over with the reporting..Tthey did a great job and were under those lights for over 24 hours straight.
I would say that Al Michaels did an excellent job as a reporter, but the real anchor was Ted Koppel, who, in my opinion, was the best television journalist of his era, and was the main anchor of “Nightline” from late 1979 through 2005. That show originated as special reports covering the hostage crisis in Iran, and was so good that they just continued the program, almost always just focusing on one story from the day.
This is the first time I've actually seen any live footage of this, but the moment where the earthquake began scrambling the broadcast was kinda scary to experience.
The eerie part is how, as Al Micheales co-anchor is talking about Dave Parkers hit, you can hear the crowd noise getting louder and louder in the background.
Thank you for doing a magnificent restoration on this footage. I remember that day.
That Loma Prieta earthquake of over 30 years ago was very painful and I will never forget that
Ty for posting this as well, i remember this so well like it was yesterday
I wasn’t born when this happened… but to see this in real time, it gives me CHILLS of the moments from the beginning of the coverage to where it became so apparent
I was 12 yrs old when the quake occurred, shopping in the back of a supermarket when it started shaking violently and the all the lights turned off. 15 seconds seemed like a lifetime and I really thought the ground was going to open up and that I would die as I held onto the cheese display. We didn't know the extent of the damages around the Bay Area for hours as the power didn't come back on for a while. Ironically I was in LA for the 1994 Northridge quake and I'll never forget how scary both were.
God bless you, @kristinelai, for having to go through two earthquakes in a span of 5 years. The scary thing about these earthquakes is the aftershocks. It comforts me to know that you and a lot of people survived a terrifying experience.🙏😥🇺🇲
@@survivor5044 Thank you! Yes the aftershocks are more nerve-wracking and sometimes even deadlier. I recall "Lucky Buck" was found alive days after the quake - in his car smashed under the collapsed freeway in Oakland. Sadly he died months later from his injuries. I often think of those who weren't as fortunate and who maybe have suffered for days before being found :(
God DAMN that's a great quality recording. Especially the audio. Thank goodness for *vhs* *hifi!*
S-VHS or BETACAM
Thank You for posting this piece of television and baseball history.
Al Michaels as news anchor is an amazing shift.
A pros pro
Very amazed by the video quality!!!!
omg the quality is incredible! how did you got this quality! thank you for sharing this with us!
Recorded it on S-VHS using a C-Band (big) satellite dish from the ABC network feed. Captured this from the original tape -- it held up pretty well.
@@VPR2B wow! Most of my VHS are dead. This is top notch quality indeed 😺👍 plus, most recordings of that day were directly from the ABC's World Series and not from another affiliate like your video so it's super interesting to see how it was transmitted by interrupting normal programming. Thanks again for sharing this! ✨😺
@@minakomel Thanks! I still have one working machine -- a JVC HR-S9600U -- but I've completed capturing all my tapes, so it's taking a break right now.
@@VPR2B awesome work 😎 thank you!!!!
What state are you from if I may ask when you were recording this? And which ABC satellite affiliate did you get? We had cable, so our local ABC affiliate was from Portland, Oregon. I was 8 when this happened and my family were shocked and horrified when we saw the events unfold, when we thought we were gonna watch the WS. My mom made a lot of prayers that evening for a lot of families and people down there
I'm in California, but I didn't record this off a local ABC affiliate -- I had a large 10-foot backyard dish and was receiving the ABC satellite feed that blanketed the entire continental US. The feed was intended for reception by local affiliates, but anyone with a suitable dish could also tune in.
That’s pretty cool
No ghosting and even deinterlaced! You are awesome, pal! You can upload in 960x720@59.94, though.
I was 9 years old watching the World Series with the babysitter and my younger brother in Ogden, Utah when this happened. It was pretty scary for us to see everything. My parents came home after their dinner out and watched the rest of this unfold. The restaurant they were at showed the opening of the game. I stayed up all night alone watching the local Salt Lake ABC affiliate so all of this video brings back memories. Later on that night KSL local CBS affiliate did a segment about our possibilities of having a quake on the Wasatch front which was scary for me at the time. 😂
Thanks for this very interesting to watch. Took them a long time to realize it was double decker highway that had collapsed onto itself. I know where I live in Seattle there was major concern about our own double decker. Which was eventually proven correct when it also received damage in an earthquake in 2001, though thankfully not enough to collapse. Still even though every engineer said it would never survive another earthquake they kept it open for nearly 20 more years until they finally built a replacement tunnel in 2019.
Amazingly all the construction actually made my commute better, as it scarred everyone away from the waterfront for a good 2 years or so. :)
I remember watching non-stop and they pivoted from saying that highway buckled to saying it collapsed onto itself.i turned to my folks and that this just got really bad. Worst disaster I saw in the country until I had the misfortune to be in the WTC on 9/11.
Thank you for posting this.
I can't believe the total lack of coverage and absolute silence about the collapse of so much of the upper deck of the Cyprus Freeway that there was video footage of shot by a helicopter from nearly the beginning of the all of the immediate post-earthquake video that there was film of. It was 14 city blocks of the highway that collapsed and the scene of the greatest number of deaths of people that were in the earthquake. I remember that night as clear as yesterday but never realized until I just saw this now 34+ years later that so much of the upper deck collapsed on to the lower deck of the freeway and the the collapsed distance went on so far and was so catastrophic.
I feel like they didn't realize on the East Coast exactly what they were seeing. Otherwise, it's crazy they didn't cover it earlier
@@BPlantyPNWThey didn’t understand. Looking at the early footage, you couldn’t tell that it was the pancaking of one level onto the one below. No one realized that there were lost souls crushed in there; such a horrific tragedy.
This broadcast is historical, even to one not in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I was at my grandma's house at the time, my parents ready to take me home, when coverage of the quake, perhaps this very newscast preserved here, was on the TV.
Here is where I got a literal real-life crash course on the concept of... TIME ZONES!
Namely the West Coast is three hours behind us on the East Coast. (I lived in Long Island, NY at the time, and am now stuck in FL, plus the only timezone I've been in is EST...)
Good story! Thanks for sharing. 👍
@@VPR2B ooh- The length of this thing alone makes me wonder if you had two SVHS decks, for tape change compensation. I mean you couldn't record six hours in Standard Play in those days...
@@JFD62780 Believe it not, this was recorded at EP, though since it’s S-VHS, it looks a lot better than regular VHS at that speed. I normally NEVER used that mode, but I wasn’t home and wanted to record the entire game, so that was my only option.
@@VPR2B welp! Looks like another question answered, as I daresay, it actually even looks better than SP mode on NON-SVHS media! XD
@@JFD62780 100% true. Sad that S-VHS never achieved wide adoption.
I watched this live way down in San Diego and knew exactly what happened, my mom was living in Los Altos and a curio cabinet filled with crystal was all knocked over, pantry tossed with bottles of sticky condiments and wine as well as her TV ending up in the middle of the living room. I remember watching the initial footage of the collapsed double decker highway in Oakland and realizing its complete pancaking collapse and astounded that Ted Koppel or other newscasters initially not aware as to what they were looking at, dozens died there.
I was 26, living and working in SF in 1989. When the quake hit, I was still at work trying to finish some projects before heading home. A lot of folks had left early to go to or go watch the game, so not many of us were still in the building, which was downtown. I’ve lived in CA all my life, and I’ve never felt a quake like that before or since. We were evacuated from the building and walked out onto the street, not knowing what was going on with the Bay Bridge and Cypress Freeway or the Marina until we came across a guy with a small portable TV. It was so eerie. All the traffic lights were out, so getting home took a while, and the power at my flat didn’t come back until the next evening.
I stayed up late watching this (I was 11 years old):when this happened. SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!!!
I was 6. We lived in Novato.
I live in Santa Monica California (Los Angeles County) used to live in San Francisco. My house is new and built to current earthquake codes for California and the office I work in has been retrofitted to current California earthquake codes. I have a storm shelter with a month’s worth of food and supplies in the case of an actual earthquake emergency.
I forgot to add the biggest earthquake I was in: Loma Prieta in San Francisco October 17th 1989. I was at the A’s-Giants World Series game! 15 seconds of pure adrenaline and fear! I’m glad I wasn’t on the Bay Bridge and especially not on the Cypress Expressway!
4:42 "We're having an earthquake"
Famous last words.
I was in San Francisco when this happened. Three days without power, hearing about the fire, the collapsed freeway and spending time with a friend and his family.
The quality of this is absolutely amazing!! I was only 2 when this happened, such an unreal tragedy!
October 17, 1989. 5:04pm. I remember like it was yesterday. I was living in Daly City with my mom, she worked downtown SF at the post office. Took her 7 hours to get home. I had just got home and I was getting ready to watch Dance Party USA! I went to open the window cause it was hot and stuffy in the apartment. By the time I turned around, the quake started. I was scared, but calm thinking it was a usual small California earthquake. But it kept going and got immediately stronger, Stuff started flying off the shelves and I just stood there, with my fingers in my ears. Don't know why, just what I did when I was scared. Then the power went out, then it stopped. I was a senior at Westmoor Highschool and my friend lived right across the street. I went right over and stayed until my mom got home. She knew exactly where I was too, came right over and got me, not surprised I wasn't there. I couldn't sleep for days.
We lost Commander Nelson of the SFPD 6 months after this happened. His leadership will not be forgotten.
8:41 ABC Airs Roseanne as an Emergency Backup Plan
The reason they were able to cut to it so rapidly was because they already had it cued up in the event of a rain delay.
I was 8 years old on this day, living in a suburb of Oakland, and seeing this brings back both the bad memories and the good.
The baseball fan in me was so happy about the series, too. Whatever happened, my two local teams were going to be #1 and #2. We'd win either way.
Holy… shit!! For something from 1989, this makes me feel like I’m watching it live!!
Imagine watching this live. No internet. No cell phones, no Twitter letting people know what’s going on….
9/11 was like pretty like this as well cell phones were in use but the technology used in them was analog and they all crashed and went down in lots of places right after it happened especially in New York which was understandable.
what was cool about the local coverage is that the KGO logo could be seen 'under' the ABC coverage when the sat went out briefly. BTW, cool username. :)
I didn't know analogue satellite feeds could be that clear! Nicely done!
Thank you for posting such a high quality video from 35 years ago. It's like going back into a time machine all over again. God bless everyone that were witnesses to something so frightening.🇺🇲😥🙏
Really interesting: thanks for posting. Question for anyone who knows about broadcasting: they joined the Roseanne rerun already in progress rather than starting it from the beginning. Do networks keep an alternate show running in case of an unforeseen technical difficulty like this?
In those days, yes, especially in a high-profile broadcast such as this. Anything can happen at any time, and in this case it did. It's easier these days when all video is run from servers -- very easy to simple have a second list that's playing alternate programming. We even used to do that at the local station, if the risk was deemed great enough.
Especially with baseball and the possibility or rainouts, the network always has a back up schedule of programming they can jump to when needed.
It also may have been intended for West Coast primetime that night originally, too. Two days earlier, an episode of _Life Goes On_ was paired with the second game of the Series. It aired before the game in the Eastern and Central Time Zones and served as the lead-out show after the game for the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones on ABC. It's similar to how _MacGyver_ would always air after _Monday Night Football_ from September to December on the West Coast. With the game having been scheduled to take up a minimum of three hours if it had been played, ABC would have needed other programming to air for the West Coast after the game.
This had to have been one of the shining moments of Al Michaels career. Right up there with his Miracle On Ice shouts. I saw an interview with Al later about this coverage and the host was amazed at this smooth and calm he was during this coverage because Al covers sports and not hard news. Al pointed out that, as a sports reporter, he had to cover breaking news live all the time during the games.
Good point!
I was in Walsh's Tavern in Philadelphia eating dinner while watching this.
5:04pm... I'll never forget it.
The fun begins at 4:38
I remember watching this coverage while I was doing my homework back in 8th grade. I lived in the Eastern time zone at the time. I remember falling asleep listening to it.
I was 3 years old lol.
I was with my mom in the Century grocery store off MacArthur in Oakland. Wine bottles falling and crashing and everything was very loud and chaotic. My dad worked for Caltrans and was pretty much gone for 2 months working in the recovery/clearing effort at the Cypress freeway collapse. I remember after the quake and before the complete demolition of the freeway you could see sections still standing but didn't connect to any other structure. For a while I had nightmares where my mom and I would be driving on the freeway and abruptly just drive off the edge.
How traumatic for those workers who had to remove the wreckage and victims from the Cypress collapse. I hope your dad and others were able to get counseling.
Remember watching this as a 11 year old at my uncle’s house
Interesting side note to see all the comments about how spoiled we are by high quality video and that this becomes a main talking point about a tape (literally) from the late 1980's. I see it more as nostalgic for the days before the internet and particularly the poison of 24 hour news, cell phones and social media. Not all technology is entirely progress nor exclusively positive.
Rip James earl Jones 😔
Nice to see this in good quality, though I can see some static from the satellite reception which was common with that. I taped a few minutes of KTVU just coming back on the air then, have it uploaded here but need to redo it in the right frame rate. On the 2nd VCR I taped KRON but that tape needs to be found. They were in a dark studio putting microphones up to a radio reporting what was going on.
I remember this as it happened yesterday. I was 29 when this occurred and it felt like if I never left the TV for days
It’s weird to watch this. I grew up in Berkeley and was watching the game with my dad. Never actually saw this broadcast because we were all in the street. We did listen to the radio. My house and our neighborhood were all fine. Just terrifying. But I remember in the coming days watching in horror at what people went through.
Side note. I am a huge Oakland A”s fan. I am devastated that they are moving 😢
It’s amazing how much in the dark ages we were, even just 35 years ago, largely without cell phones, the internet and social media.
I was at work in Burlingame, near Candlestick Park. I lived in Oakland and could not get to my home for 3 days. Drive from Burlingame to downtown San Francisco and then to a friends house to stay. Aftershocks for weeks. I’ll never forget it.
I was only 7 when this happened. I remember my dad getting ready to watch the game when this happened. I live on the east coast and I did not watch the news coverage. I’m not a baseball fan, but before making this post, I sat and watched this whole video from start to finish. This video is historic and the quality looks like something happening live.
Very different news coverage from today. Today you would know everything instantly. This was a slow gathering of information over hours.
And there would not be repeated cutaways to alternate programming.
Recording On 9 KUSA-TV In Denver Colorado October 17th 1989
4:32 - Ring of Fire (1991, IMAX) brought me here.
Weirdly, the night before I had a dream where something big fell down and created a ripple that ran across the US... Right towards us...
Precognition on display.
R.I.P
James Earl Jones
I remember watching this like it was yesterday. I had a cousin living in San Francisco at the time. In the age before cell phones, it was two days before we heard from him. He packed up his stuff and moved back to Louisiana the following month. He rather deal with hurricanes than earthquakes.
Thanks for sharing that! Wondering if you can tell me how you became aware of this clip? Over the past few days I’ve started receiving endless comments on it, which leads to me believe it’s been publicized somewhere.
@@VPR2B It showed up on my recommended. I am bit of an old news hound, though, and like watching old news clips so I guess it was recommended to me due to my search history.
@@PimpLenin Thanks. I guess some algorithm picked it up and started recommending it to a lot of people, which is kinda cool.
News coverage of unfolding events is a very interesting study. Especially during the time before the 24-hour news cycle and flood of information.
They still have not shown the Nimitz Freeway (the one that collapsed). After the quake, we were all joking and laughing, but it was just nervous energy which comes with experiencing a quake. When the pictures of the collapsed freeway came through, we went from smiles to tears literally--it was not funny anymore. One friend just sat down and cried.
Same. We were kind of joking around until we learned of the Cypress structure collapse and the horror of it.
East Coast 9pm 19 years old watching this live from Chelmsford Ma
I was living in Sacramento at the time, watching the beginning of the World Series and I felt it as well as my neighbor.
*ANYTHING* can interrupt Roseanne! Yuck!
She’s lost it
You couldn’t write a movie better than this opening.
This is proof that some things are bigger than sports. A piece of history to be forever remembered and never forgotten.