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Once on the air, the anchormen's chief problem was how to fill the time. They played prerecorded videotapes of the ill-fated astronauts, interviewed their own correspondents in Cape Canaveral and elsewhere, trotted out scale models of the shuttle to describe how it func tioned and scrambled to round up "experts" who might be able to explain what had happened. ABC got former Astro naut Gene Cernan to its Houston studios. CBS brought on Leo Krupp, a former test pilot for Rockwell International, and NBC recruited former Astronaut Donald ("Deke") Slayton.
NBC's Brokaw was the coolest and most lucid of the three; Mission Control's first reference to the accident as a "major malfunction" was, he said, "the understatement of the year." CBS's Rather appeared shakiest in the early going, and his network was the slowest to marshal its resources. "What you have here," said Rather at one point, "is a reporter vamping for time." (CBS's most famous space enthusiast, Walter Cronkite, was vacationing abroad when the accident occurred.)
Still, all three networks performed with admirable sensitivity and restraint. Some viewers were offended at the oft-repeated shots that had been taped by WNEV-TV in Boston of Schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe's parents viewing the launch at the Kennedy Space Center. But interviews with grieving relatives were refreshingly absent. Though NASA had immediately sequestered the crew's families following the accident, network executives insist they would have avoided such interviews in any case. "We had our chance at the time of the accident," says Jeff Gralnick, vice president and executive producer of special programming for ABC. "The first rule is not to badger the bereaved."
The networks also drew some criticism for constant replays of the shuttle explosion and premature speculation about the long-range consequences of the accident. But most of it seemed necessary. "What else could we do?" said Brokaw. "We couldn't go back to soap operas or game shows. People wanted answers, as many as they could get." Added CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter: "People didn't sit in front of their sets simultaneously. We had to keep showing it (the explosion scene) because there were new people constantly joining the audience."
Though unable to match TV for immediacy, newspapers across the country also responded with extraordinary efforts. The New York Times devoted its entire front page and nine more advertising-free pages to the disaster, virtually unprecedented coverage. More than 80 staff people contributed to the package, including a Times technical manager who witnessed the launch while on vacation in Cape Canaveral. The paper departed from its traditional discursive headline style for a stark opening line: THE SHUTTLE EXPLODES. Said Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "I didn't want just another headline. Using 'the' was the most important decision. It gave almost a biblical quality."
Elsewhere, the Miami Herald turned out an eight-page special section, wrapped around the previously printed front page, for its Tuesday-evening editions. Both Los Angeles papers, the Times and the Herald Examiner, moved up the publication of their Tuesday-afternoon editions and doubled the usual size of their pressruns. Denver's Rocky Mountain News published its first extra since V-J day; all 67,000 copies sold out.