I used to think the moon landing hoax was just a joke until I saw the 1969 CBS broadcast myself.

I watched the whole thing online last week, and the way Walter Cronkite talks about it, you can hear the scripted pauses. It felt like a show, not a live feed from space. That was the moment I started digging into the actual tech they claimed to have. Has anyone else watched the original broadcast and gotten that same weird feeling?

3 comments

3 Comments

eva_garcia562mo ago

Totally felt that weird vibe too (watched it with my skeptical uncle last month).

alice_harris352mo ago

But the scripted parts still feel off to me.

fisher.mason2mo ago

The Apollo 11 broadcast had a lot of pre-recorded segments mixed in with live shots. Those scripted pauses from Cronkite were often because they were waiting for a signal from the moon, which had a two and a half second delay. The tech for live TV from that distance in 1969 was incredibly new and patchy. So some parts felt like a show because they literally had to fill airtime with prepared material until the next live feed came through.