While 1967 was a terrible year for Detroit, 1968 was as bad for the nation. As Detroit struggled to regain its footing from the riots that had ripped at its very heart, the country was being pulled apart by the mounting body count in Vietnam. It became the first war to be fought daily in living rooms on the evening news. The power and impact of television was suddenly being understood in a whole new way.
Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner now anchored the nightly news on ABC. By now, Detroit had become a focal point of the civil rights movement. Not only did the city have a large African-American population, but Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement had been financed by labor leader Walter Reuther and his UAW union. The UAW had put up $50,000 in bail and bond money to get King and his followers out of jail in Birmingham, Alabama.
In 1968, events in the national news had reached happened at a breathtaking pace. In January, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, a naval spy vessel. President Lyndon Johnson, weary of the anti-war sentiment, decided not to run for a second term. In April, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. In June, Sen. Robert Kennedy was shot and killed in Los Angeles. By the time the Democrats met for their convention on a steamy week in August in Chicago, tensions were at a boiling point. That week, Chicago Police and left wing demonstrators clashed in a ferocious uprising that shocked the nation.
The combination of frequency and prominence of news confirmed what television executives in New York had known for some time: that news was the central fiber of television. ABC, like other networks, had by now consolidated all its feature programming in New York and Los Angeles. Very little was being produced locally anymore. But news was growing and morning talk shows were still playing well locally.
The last Detroit original from the radio days to make it onto a national TV line-up was The Green Hornet, which had a brief run in 1966. The Avengers, a British mystery-adventure show starring Patrick McNee and Diana Rigg led the ABC prime-time line-up with Mod Squad, It Takes A Thief, The Dating Game, The Lawrence Welk Show and The Flying Nun starring a VERY young Sally Field.
