Bicentennial Minutes

I was a teenager when America celebrated its Bicentennial. The two-ish years leading up to 1976 included something unique to any previous 'freedom-from-kings' celebration: television snippets called Bicentennial Minutes.

The series, developed by CBS ran from July 4, 1974 through December of 1976 on all THREE channels: ABC, NBC, and CBS. They were non-network-partisan. These segments had a tight time slot between 8:00 and 9:00 Eastern Time, which was known as the Prime Time of daily TV.

During Prime Time, and before the internet and cells phones, the daily newspaper was likely read, the dinner dishes washed, homework finished, and favorite series TV was watched, often as a family. This was the perfect way and time of day to reach the most people with targeted messages that ran for a minute.

The intro music was always the same, celebrities introduced themselves and began their spot with 'Two hundred years ago today..." It quickly became familiar, and as does happen at times with familiar things; it was easy to mock.

TV shows such as All in the Family, Match Game, and Saturday Night Live worked Bicentennial Minutes into their scripts much as we today may say 'Thank you for coming to my TED Talk' when we wax on authoritatively on a subject. Saturday Night Live used it several times, like this one from November 1975, the Bee Centenniel Minute:

It also became a reliable bit to work into late night shows like The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. Bicentennial fever was everywhere for almost two years. We talked about it, bought red/white/blue paper towels, t-shirts, dresses for the porch geese, and sang songs in every school music revue. Although he didn't refer to the 'minutes', Johnny covered some familiar topics in his opening monologue for July 4, 1975 that include Venezuela, gas prices, and pokes at the President.

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Big Aside: Schoolhouse Rock

Now that we are well-down a rabbit hole, I can't skip over America Rock, the Schoolhouse Rock that has to do with History and was shown on ABC during the Saturday morning cartoons. Today we have Hamilton that sets American History to song, but back then it was Schoolhouse and America Rock. For some reason this one, No More Kings which debuted September 1975, never gets old for me:

For those of you that now either want to revisit your old favorites or explore the fun that was Schoolhouse Rock, here is a little bonus for reading this far: an index of the episodes with clickable links to the lyrics of Grammar Rock, Science Rock, Money Rock, America Rock, Multiplication Rock, and the Scooter Computer & Mr Chips episodes.

Here is a link to the YouTube channel, too. Pace yourself and enjoy.

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Back to Bicentennial Minutes

The Bicentennial was truly a BIG deal and the Bicentennial Minutes received an Emmy in 1976.

These small bites of history came on night after night; 731 episodes one after the other. They aired either at 8:27 or 8:57, which made it at the end of a show or the mid-way commercial break. While I realize that people younger than me may not know all of the 'celebrities' that appeared (I certainly don't!) , some of the names will be familiar to most people:

• Charlton Heston (first episode)
• Sally Field
• Paul Newman
• Joe Biden (October 1974)
• Jean Stapleton
• Ed Asner
• Lucille Ball
• Muhammad Ali
• Johnny Cash
• Hank Aaron
• Gloria Steinem
• Dick Clark

In addition to these more famous folks there were playwrights, artists, authors, soldiers, and journalists.

Some of these minutes are available online. I found a list by episode that gives specifics about the guest speaker of the episode even though not all of them contain links to the content. The last Minute was on New Years Eve 1976, narrated by then-President Gerald Ford, just a month after he had lost re-election. It ran double the time because it was also a signing off, an end to the series.

I understand that the last episode of the Stephen Colbert Show had the highest ratings of any show. These small minutes wouldn't give him a run for that distinction. But- I remember when, night after night, the Bicentennial became real to the United States citizens. An understanding of the people, actions, and history that lead the country's founders to turn away from being ruled by a king and create a government of the people, by the people.