Today in History—January 4: When the State of the Union Went Prime Time

“The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed.” —Lyndon Baines Johnson

On Monday, January 4, 1965, U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the first prime-time televised State of the Union address. The scheduling choice was deliberate: For the first time, the State of the Union was aimed at the public parked around their TVs, not just members of Congress in the room. This marked a turning point in American politics.

Television itself was still a relatively new political tool. Harry S. Truman had put his State of the Union on TV in 1947, but the broadcast aired during the day. Johnson’s real innovation was the timing.

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In 1950 fewer than 10 percent of American households owned a TV; in the 1960s that figure surged to more than 85 percent, driven by the proliferation of color TV programming, satellite technology, and more affordable prices. The medium could now be used to reach tens of millions of viewers—as the first televised presidential debate in 1960 between Vice Pres. Richard Nixon and challenger Sen. John F. Kennedy had demonstrated, drawing an audience of some 70 million Americans.

For his second State of the Union, Johnson wanted that audience—and he got it. His “Great Society” State of the Union was broadcast nationwide on television and radio. President Johnson had turned a fuddy-duddy “annual message to Congress” constitutional requirement into an event, complete with advertising and commentators.

President Johnson had been using the phrase “Great Society” since a speechwriter slipped it into a commencement address the previous year, shortly after Johnson had assumed the presidency following the assassination of JFK. The slogan became both his campaign catchphrase for the 1964 election and his governing agenda. After his landslide win, Johnson proposed the largest expansion of social welfare programming since the New Deal. It led to the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, Job Corps, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities—to name a few.

Johnson had changed the choreography of American politics with that State of the Union, and associated traditions developed accordingly. The following year the opposition party began delivering a televised rebuttal to the speech. And in this same decade the practice of naming a designated survivor also started: The selected individual, somewhere in the line of succession to the presidency, is chosen to sit out the speech in a protected location.

When LBJ laid out his plan that night, he wasn’t just reporting on the condition of the nation; he was pitching Americans his vision—delivered straight to their living rooms, between commercials—and setting a precedent that every president since has followed.

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