CNN Miniseries: The Sixties

[Frank W. Baker]

CNN  May 29 8pm & 11pm ET  (check local listings for the exact channel and time in your area)
"Television Comes of Age"  A stirring glimpse is taken into the craze surrounding the TV as Americans gathered by the millions to be entertained by the ground-breaking dramas and sitcoms that helped to influence generations as well as witness life-changing historical events.

 

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/the-sixties/

Future Programs in the Series

• 6/05: The World on the Brink (1960 – 1963) – The heady days of Camelot were clouded by the political and military tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Marvin Kalb, Richard Reeves, Robert Dallek, Sergei Khrushchev and more explain how close the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought us all to World War III – and how two nuclear superpowers moved from near confrontation to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (TRT 60min)
• 6/12: The Assassination of President Kennedy  (1963 -1969) – Max Holland, Robert Dallek, Mark Lane, Robert Caro, Alexandra Zapruder, Vincent Bugliosi,members of the Warren Commission staff, and others trace the timeline of events leading up to that November day in Dallas, and try to explain why the investigations, media coverage, and personalities associated with the tragedy remain so compelling and controversial. (TRT 120min)
• 6/19: The War in Vietnam  (1961 – 1968) – From just several hundred advisors at the start of the decade, to more than 550,000 American troops by the end of it, the escalation of the war in Vietnam – and the fighting and the dying – brought social and political polarization back home.  It was also televised – and, the more Americans saw of the war, the more unpopular the conflict became.  Tim O’Brien, Frederik Logeval, Karl Marlantes, Neil Sheehan, Andrew Bacevich, George Herring, Tom Hayden, and Philip Caputo discuss the Gulf of Tonkin,  and LBJ, for this most complex of American stories. (TRT 60min)
• 6/26: A Long March to Freedom  (1960 – 1968) – Selma, Birmingham, and the March on Washington are reexamined by eyewitnesses to history.  Diane Nash, U.S.Rep. John Lewis, U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rev. C.T. Vivian, Bob Moses, Diane McWhorter, Taylor Branch, David Garrow, and Isabel Wilkerson give critical context to the lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer, integration, and the Children’s Crusade for the moral mission of the Civil Rights Movement. (TRT 120min)
• 7/03: THE SIXTIES – EPISODE MARATHON
• 7/10: The British Invasion  (1964 – 1967) – “The lads from Liverpool” led a musical cultural exchange that impacted everything from fashion to sexual mores to politics. Graham Nash, Smokey Robinson, Dave Clark, Michelle Phillips, and Mickey Dolenzrecall what it was like to make the music that mirrored the souls of the young and the restless.  Jann Wenner, Nelson George, David Wild, Tom Hanks, and Mikal Gilmore describe how The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Dave Clark Five, The Animals, The Who, and others reinterpreted and reintroduced American music to Americans – and how the song sheets of the Boomers did so much more than provide a soundtrack for the generation of change. (TRT 60min)
• 7/17: The Space Race (1960 – 1969) – Astronaut and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Mike Massimino and Dave Scott, and Walter Issacson, Douglas Brinkley, Tom Wolfe, Andy Chaikin, and Tom Hanks describe the greatest adventure story of all time.  The “giant leap” pushed the boundaries of exploration to an unprecedented frontier, inspiring inventions and imaginations around the world for generations. (TRT 60min)
• 7/24: The Times, They are A-Changin’ (1960 – 1969) – Gloria Steinem, Robert Kennedy, Jr., former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, Cecile Richards, Marlo Thomas, Douglas Brinkley, and Gail Collins discuss how feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, conservatism, and the gay rights movements were fueled by deep yearnings for freedom by a generation unwilling to wait. (TRT 60min)
• 7/31: 1968  (1968) – Tom Hayden, Gloria Steinem, Lance Morrow, Evan Thomas, Dan Rather, Morley Safer, Tim Naftali, and Mark Kurlansky discuss how one of the most dramatic years in American history was punctuated by a Soviet incursion into Czechoslovakia, devastating assassinations, turning points in the wars in Southeast Asia, a decisive and televised end to the Johnson Administration, violence at the Democratic National Convention, and the election of President Nixon. (TRT 60min)
• 8/07: Sex, Drugs, and Rock N’ Roll  (1960 – 1969) – American culture changed fundamentally from the beginning to the end of the 1960s as the tastes, morals, and politics of the Baby Boomer generation came to define America.  Jann Wenner,Grace Slick, David Wild, Leonard Steinhorn, Tom Wolfe, Douglas Brinkley, Tom Hanks, and more describe how beatniks, Haight-Ashbury, Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, hippies, and Hell’s Angels became counter-cultural touchstones that still resonate today.  (TRT 60min)