On June 1st 1980, CNN started broadcasting its news bulletins in the US. At the time, the network’s eccentric owner Ted Turner promised that the 24-hour news channel would remain on the air – give or take problems with satellite transmission – until the end of the world. And in anticipation of the impending apocalypse, Mr Turner prepared a video that has become something of a pop culture legend.
“We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live," he said, "And that will be our last event. We'll play the national anthem only one time, on the first of June, and when the end of the world comes, we'll play 'Nearer My God To Thee' before we sign off.”
While media commentators long suspected he was joking, the video has now, 34 and a half years later, surfaced online.
Below is the never-before-seen video that the remaining CNN employees were to play as humanity succumbed to war, famine, Communism, fire and brimstone, or Fox News.
The video was discovered on CNN’s MIRA system, under the easy-to-find-as-the-world-falls-apart filename 'TURNER DOOMSDAY VIDEO'. Showing its age, it’s in standard definition, with an aspect ratio of 4:3 – ideal for the televisions of the early 80s.
Rumours of the Turner Doomsday video have long been circulating, with articles in the New Yorker in 1988 reporting on it, as well as a 2001 piece in the New York Daily News.
Now it has, at long last, been found, along with the production instructions “HFR [hold for release] till end of the world confirmed.”
(H/T: The Mary Sue)
