Just about every television I grew up with was a Zenith.  So I was intrigued when I saw this video of a Zenith colour “roundie.”  We had one in our family room in Palm Beach (I’m not sure whether it was this exact model but it was close.)

The sample broadcast he chose is riveting, especially these days: Walter Cronkite’s report of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on 4 April 1968.   I doubt we watched CBS (we were NBC, Huntley-Brinkley types) but we certainly watched the reports of this.  It’s interesting to hear Dr. King evoke the Bill of Rights in his speech the night before he was killed; now so many consider those rights to be part of the problem.

I’ve cued up the video to that broadcast; if you’re interested in the technical aspects of the Zenith he’s looking at, just run it back to the start.

Our own roundie went on to transmit other tumultuous events of the time, including the Watergate Hearings, as you can see below in photos from its tube.  (I’ve got recordings from that here and here.  I cropped these close, but you can see the rounding in the corners.)

On the hot seat: John Erlichman, Richard Nixon’s Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs.
Sen Sam. Ervin (D-NC), the Committee’s Chairman. His questioning of John Erlichman–which turned into a monologue on rights under the Constitution–dominates most of this excerpt.