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Seven original 1/4-inch open-reel magnetic audio tapes from the archives of television historian and archivist Phil Gries and Archival Television Audio, Inc., containing approximately 19 hours and 38 minutes of NBC Radio Network coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and its aftermath, recorded over four consecutive days from November 22–25, 1963. Recorded live off the air by direct line, the tapes begin on the evening of November 22 and continue through Kennedy’s funeral and burial on November 25.
The seven 1/4-inch reels are individually housed in their original period tape boxes, extensively annotated by Gries with dates, reel numbers, recording speeds, running times, and content information. The boxes are decorated with contemporary newspaper photographs, captions, and headlines relating to the assassination and its aftermath, including images of Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and their daughter Caroline at the Capitol, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and newspaper headlines announcing Oswald’s death and Kennedy’s burial at Arlington. According to the accompanying documentation, the reels are identified by date and approximate running time as follows:
Reel 1: November 22, 2 hours and 45 minutes
Reel 2: November 22–23, 3 hours and 10 minutes
Reel 3: November 23, 2 hours and 50 minutes
Reel 4: November 23–24, 3 hours
Reel 5: November 24, 2 hours and 55 minutes
Reel 6: November 24–25, 2 hours and 30 minutes
Reel 7: November 25, 2 hours and 28 minutes
The recordings feature reporting and commentary by Morgan Beatty, Joseph Michaels, Richard Harkness, Herbert Kaplow, Nancy Dickerson, Ray Scherer, Richard Valeriani, Peter Hackes, John Chancellor, Edwin Newman, and numerous other NBC correspondents. Coverage includes Lyndon B. Johnson’s first public statement after assuming the presidency, reports from Andrews Air Force Base as Kennedy’s casket returned to Washington, reports concerning the investigation and Oswald’s arrest, and international reaction to Kennedy’s death. Subsequent broadcasts document the public procession past Kennedy’s casket in the Capitol Rotunda, reports of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald and the subsequent announcement of Oswald’s death, and the funeral procession through Washington, Requiem Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, and final ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. The broadcasts also preserve contemporary reactions and statements from political, religious, and public figures in the United States and abroad.
According to documentation prepared by Gries and Archival Television Audio, these are the original master reels from which subsequent transfers of the recordings were made. Gries further maintains that approximately seven hours of the material are not known to survive in another accessible broadcast source or institutional archive, and describes the seven tapes as the most extensive known continuous multi-day body of NBC Radio coverage from November 22–25. These claims have not been independently verified. In overall fine condition. Accompanied by extensive documentation prepared by Gries detailing the contents and chronology of the recordings.
Gries was a dedicated recordist of broadcast history, beginning to record television audio in 1958 at the age of 15. By 1980, when home video had rendered his recording method obsolete, his archive had grown to some 8,500 programs totaling 13,000 hours, including broadcasts that the networks themselves did not retain. On November 22, 1963, hours before the extraordinary run of NBC Radio coverage preserved on these reels, the 20-year-old Gries recorded NBC television’s first two bulletins on the shooting in Dallas, read by staff announcer Don Pardo, together with the opening minutes of the network’s continuous coverage, historic material NBC did not preserve. NBC News later turned to Gries’s Pardo audio for its 50th-anniversary coverage of the assassination in 2013, a testament to the historical importance of the broadcast recordings he began making as a teenager.
