CNN launch on WTBS from TVbD on Vimeo.

CNN is 30 years old today.

Wow, has it really been 30 years?

The change of decades in this anniversary always gets me. Some strange warp in the passage of time overtakes me as a new decade is launched.

For many of us who worked for the struggling Atlanta company before the creation of CNN, this was a bitter-sweet moment where many things came together… We launched the channel as promised with no delays, but the ride was rough, the sacrifices numerous and getting to that day was not always that certain.

Sunday, June 1^st 1980.

At some point it was decided that WTBS would cover “live” the pre-launch BBQ over at the new building on Techwood, starting 3 hours prior to the official launch at 6pm and continuing with the first hour of CNN – complete with “call your cable operator” messages since WTBS reached many more viewers than CNN on that day.

It was convenient the company also owned a “remote truck” to cover sporting events, so it was easy to schedule the truck in the parking lot that day. I spent the afternoon inside the “tape” section of the truck seen in the background, while my friend to this day Bill Tush interviews a personal hero, Brian Lamb.

The goal was to record the 3-hour show without missing anything – and with one quad VTR to use, reel changes became an interesting proposition. John was in the front running Vidifont and RT directed. But our other assignment that day came without much warning – which was nothing new to us.

As part of the CNN inaugural activities, President Jimmy Carter, had given an interview in the Oval Office to Daniel Schorr and George Watson – CNN’s first Washington bureau chief. In addition to running parts of that interview on CNN, the full version was to run that evening on WTBS, but at 40-some minutes long we needed filler material to take us to the top of the hour. That filler to-be became an edit-down of the 3-hour event to fill the gap needed to the next program on WTBS that evening.

We covered the event, then shortly after 6pm, John and I left the truck and lugged the big reels over to the West Peachtree building to assemble the piece on the fly. We were fortunate to have good equipment to use, as this is long before non-linear editing, or even CMX-like computer editing. The state of our art was three Ampex AVR-3 quad two-inch and one very new Ampex VPR-2B one-inch tape machine we used for graphics and stills and field tapes. The extent of “computer editing” was placing the player machines on remote so that the recorder can gang-roll the other two quads to make an edit.

Well, we made it. We were able to condense the three-hour broadcast to a 13 minute piece… I recall we cut it close, but finished with enough time to “walk” the tape from the post room to the tape room to give to engineer Bob Craig who cued it for air…

This clip is as close to an aircheck as we have of that evening on WTBS… coming-up to 11pm Eastern on Sunday, June 1^st 1980.

I regret to say this application no longer works with Apple’s latest Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. So, as I had to update my operating system to Mac OS 10.6, I also had to give-up my trusted screensaver.

I have written to Matt, the author and developer of this spectacular app, and hope a new version will come back either as a screensaver or a full application.

I hope to be able to provide a positive update shortly, but for now, I am looking for a spare Mac running OS10.5 within sight that I can use in the meantime, just to avoid total withdrawal.

Pluto to the Sun, displaying current orbital positions of the classic nine planets and 29 natural satellites with an accurate representation of what these celestial objects look like and where they are located at that moment.

The flight path starts with a wide view of our solar system and proceeds to the first classic planet – Pluto. After reaching appropriate orbit the camera makes one revolution looking directly at that planet then, one revolution for each satellite starting at the lowest altitude.

Each object is identified by name at top of frame and the displayed shape and detail vary with each object and, obviously, not entirely accurate for planets’ changing surfaces and atmospheres – except for Earth, where orientation and rotation are accurately reflected in current time, with an option to download near-live cloud conditions.

This incredible visualization brings an acute awareness of our near-space in real-time and does at least two things for me:

First, it provides a new sync of sorts, a foundation for a broader perspective as I come to appreciate how our planetary system is connected by gravity, motion, light source and time.

Second, since these celestial bodies are always in motion and their positions in constant change, it is fair to say the views at certain times are better than others. Some times views are just very interesting, at other times absolutely stunning. Through this process I have found a very new meaning to the saying: “the planets are lined-up right”. Something I could just barely imagine previously, I can now “see” pretty accurately all the time.

And while there are some flaws that those with intricate knowledge of our solar system will recognize, this app is truly mesmerizing. It is fair to say the newer your computer and the larger your screen size and resolution, the better your viewing experience is likely to be. In my case it’s fast 1920×1200 Pluto-to-the-Sun flights running very frequently on a MacPro without any problems whatsoever.

You can download a demo version or buy a license for $6.99 at www.cosmosaver.com