One of television’s greatest urban legends turns out to be real
CNN may be regarded as the milquetoast “middle ground” also-ran to the opinionated cable news giants of Fox News and MSNBC today, but when it launched in 1980 it (and the very idea of a 24 hour news network) was widely considered to be yet another insane pet-project of its eccentric billionaire founder Ted Turner.
CNN, of course, turned out to be a world-changing success. But that doesn’t mean its DNA is free from Turner’s infamously oddball thought-processes. Case is point: It was rumored for decades that Turner had actually ordered that CNN create and maintain at the ready a special one-time-use video-package to be run in the event of The End of The World – an official sign-off for The Apocalypse. Per Turner’s specifications, the video would feature a military band performing Nearer My God to Thee, supposedly inspired by (similarly-legendary) accounts of the song being played during the sinking of The Titanic.
For years, the so-called “Doomsday Reel” was a broadcast industry legend unseen by the public (Badass Digest helpfully reminds us that it was parodied in Gremlins 2,) but now the actual original clip has been unearthed in a report by Jalopnik’s Michael Ballaban; which embeds a screen-capture of the actual video along with a brief history of it’s existence.
The original video is still on-file at CNN, reportedly under instructions to be held for release until The End has been confirmed. Exactly who is expected to be onhand at CNN in order to confirm or execute such a command in such circumstances is not immediately clear.
Source: Jalopnik
