First Man on the Moon Rocks Our World
Don Draper watched it. So did Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell, Peggy Olson, and Bert Cooper. Everyone on Earth, it seems—Mad Men and otherwise—parked themselves in front of a TV on July 20, 1969, to watch astronaut Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon. According to estimates, a global audience of 600 million tuned in, making it the most-watched TV program in history at the time.
To put that moment in perspective, consider the recent broadcast of the World Cup Final between Germany and Argentina on July 13. It drew an estimated 1 billion viewers. But when you look at the number of viewers for both events as a percentage of global population, the moon shot rules, 16 percent to 13 percent.
To quote Bert Cooper’s last word after seeing Armstrong step onto the lunar dust before he himself bit the dust: “Bravo!”
In honor of the 45th anniversary of one of TV’s most transcendent moments, The Connectivist looked back at the late 1960s. We collected some fascinating facts and figures about our television habits then and compared them with the most recent data available now to shine a little moonlight on how much we’ve changed over the past four-and-a-half decades.
What’s the population of the United States?
1969: 202,676, 946
2014: 318,469,5902
How many of us have TVs?
1969: 96% of U.S. households own at least one set. Only 39.3% of those are color. The last black and white TVs were manufactured in 1978
2013: 99% own at least one set, though yearly TV sales have been declining as more consumers choose to view programming on multiple platforms such as tablets and smartphones
I have my eye on a new TV. What’s it going to cost me?
1969: A Sony Trinitron 12” color set goes for $320, equivalent to about $2,000 today
2014: The same $2,000 will get you a Sharp 70” LED HDTV
How many channels are there?
1969: 3 major networks (CBS, NBC, ABC), plus PBS in some markets, and a few local stations
2014: The addition of FOX makes four major networks. PBS is still going strong, and there are an estimated 900 plus other channels to choose from across the cable spectrum
I’d like to stream a movie tonight.
1969: Forget it. The Internet is not much more than a series of small computers interconnected at four universities used to send short text messages. Transmission speeds are 50 Kilobits per second, about the same rate offered to consumers by the first dial-up services like AOL in the late 1980s
2014: Cable broadband speeds of anywhere from 6 to 100 Megabits per second are available. That’s at least 120 times as fast as in 1969…and the late 1980s
Which search engine should I use?
1969: Got a library card? No seriously, the first user-friendly search engine for the public did not appear until 21 years later, in 1990. It was called “Archie.”
2014: Start your engine: there are more than 170 available today.
Out of curiosity, how much time do we spend in front of a screen?
1969: We watch an average of about six hours per day of TV
2013: We average about 5 hours, 9 minutes total per day with our screens (TV, online, mobile); the majority of that time—about 4 hours, 31 minutes—is devoted exclusively to television
Read more here: First Man on the Moon Rocks Our World