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Showing posts from February, 2011

A Really Big Show

We all remember exactly where we were for the 1963 assassination of JFK or the great Northeast Blackout of 1965. Similarly, our parents’ generation recalled their whereabouts on V-E Day and our children will always note where they were on 9/11. We tend to share those personal details when we talk about these historic events. This month marks the anniversary of an occasion every bit as momentous to anyone born before 1960. On February 9, 1964, The Beatles came to The Ed Sullivan Show . But, nobody has a story about where they were when John, Paul, George and Ringo took to the stage in front of 728 live attendees and 73 million television viewers. That’s because we were all in the exact same place … in our living room or den, with our entire families, huddled around a grainy, black and white television. That was the power Ed Sullivan held over American families from 1948 to 1971 when audiences exceeding 50 million were the weekly norm. Though I was still very young when the Beatl...