9:04am Friday 10th July 2009
Almost four decades after Neil Armstrong’s words “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” crackled into living-rooms, the first moon landing remains the most iconic TV moment for one in five Yorkshire viewers.
On July 21, 1969, viewers watched in awe as Armstrong stepped on to the surface of the Moon.
The live broadcast, to a global audience of 600 million, illustrated the power of television.
Forty years later, in an online survey commissioned by TV Licensing, 20 per cent of people from the region picked the historic event as the most iconic moment broadcast live on TV.
It came second after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, picked by 32 per cent of people polled.
Iain Logie Baird, curator of television at the National Media Museum in Bradford, and grandson of John Logie Baird, inventor of the first television, said: “A large part of television’s power lies in how it is able to transmit vision and sound instantaneously.
“Moments like the Moon landing are ephemeral – they can be experienced only once in real time. This unpredictability unleashes a sense of mass anticipation. Everyone is watching the same historic events unfold.
“Watching TV images from the Moon was a completely new experience for viewers and still exerts a powerful hold over our collective imagination.”
TV Licensing commissioned the research as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the need to be covered by a TV licence when watching live television, whether on a TV set, computer or mobile phone.
TV Licensing spokesman Charlotte Renwick said: “A lot has changed since Neil Arm-strong set foot on the Moon, not least how we watch TV.
“Many people will have gathered round a computer, rather than a TV set, to watch the most recent event in our top ten, Barack Obama’s inauguration.”
The first Moon landing, and other iconic TV moments in the survey, are shown on a loop at the National Media Museum’s Experience TV gallery.
The gallery opened in 2007, when the museum held a Media Matters campaign urging visitors to vote for iconic media moments in television, film, photography, radio and the internet.
Clips shown at the museum include the Morecambe and Wise breakfast sketch, the final of the first series of Big Brother, and the 1953 Coronation.
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