Tuesday
The day the networks gave up the schedule
American radio spent the night on rumour, took the SHAEF communiqué at 3:32 in the morning, and then did something it had never done: cancelled the commercials and stayed with one story for twenty-four hours. This is the deepest surviving day in the archive.
Opening the day…
The night of
Midnight – 3:00 am ET
Harry James and Kitty Kallen on WOR, interrupted. German radio had announced landings in Normandy hours before the Allies said anything, and the American networks spent the small hours reporting that the enemy was reporting an invasion — unconfirmed, repeated, and correct.
3:00 – 6:00 am ET
At 3:32 am Eastern, SHAEF released it and the networks read it cold. John Snagge said it to Britain — “D-Day has come” — in the voice the BBC kept for exactly this. Eisenhower's recorded message to the peoples of Western Europe followed. Listen to the first hour and you can hear announcers reading a sentence they have been waiting two years to read.
6:00 am – noon ET
CBS World News, then the daytime serials — but Valiant Lady opens on war bonds and Light of the World goes out to a country that woke up to it. At noon Kate Smith set aside her programme for a prayer for the troops. The commercial breaks were being given away; the sponsors did not ask for them back.
Noon – 5:00 pm ET
The pool recordings begin to arrive: George Hicks aboard the USS Ancon, recording through an air attack, the most celebrated combat recording of the war; Chester Wilmot inside a glider; Guy Byam over the drop zone; Robin Duff five minutes before H-Hour. At three o'clock Eastern, CBS carried King George VI calling the Empire to prayer.
5:00 – 10:00 pm ET
Lowell Thomas at half past six. Fibber McGee and Molly went on at 6:30 Central with a D-Day script — the writers had had one working day — and the Passing Parade, and Ginny Simms. Everything on the air that evening had been rewritten since breakfast, and you can hear which shows managed it.
10:00 pm ET – midnight
At ten Eastern, Roosevelt did not report the invasion; he asked the country to pray with him, and read the prayer he had written himself, aloud, for six minutes, with the nation reading along from the newspapers. Bob Hope followed on NBC Red with the monologue people still quote. Then Ned Calmer and Quincy Howe took the night shift and the beachhead held.
Where this comes from
