Bicentennial Minutes

Storyline

Bicentennial Minutes was a series of short educational American television segments commemorating the bicentennial of the American Revolution. The segments were produced by the CBS Television Network and broadcast nightly from July 4, 1974, until December 31, 1976. The segments were sponsored by Shell Oil Company. The series was created by Ethel Winant and Louis Friedman of CBS, who had overcome the objections of network executives who considered it to be an unworthy use of program time. The producer of the series was Paul Waigner, the executive producer was Bob Markell, and the executive story editor and writer was Bernard Eismann from 1974 to 1976. He was followed by Jerome Alden. In 1976, the series received an Emmy Award in the category of Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement. It also won a Special Christopher Award in 1976. The videotaped segments were one minute long and were broadcast each night during prime time hours, generally at approximately 8:57 P.M. Eastern time. The format of the segments did not change, although each segment featured a different narrator, often a CBS network television star. The narrator, after introducing himself or herself, would state "This is a Bicentennial Minute," followed by the phrase "Two hundred years ago today..." and a description a historical event or personage prominent on that particular date two hundred years before during the American Revolution. The segment would close with the narrator saying, "I'm, and that's the way it was." This was an offhand reference to the close of the weeknight CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, who always ended each news telecast by saying, "And that's the way it is."