Yesterday I posted about the connections between evangelical Christianity and belief in the biblical End Times. While I was flipping some new stories into our {R}emnants Flipboard mag yesterday afternoon I found another story about the end of the world involving a recently-discovered video that Ted Turner had made for CNN to play when they sign off as that final trumpet blows. Here’s the scoop from Jalopnik…
Thirty-four years ago, at the launch of Ted Turner’s Cable News Network, the founder made a grandiose and specific promise about his newly created round-the-clock operation. “Barring satellite problems, we won’t be signing off until the world ends,” Turner declared. And in anticipation, he prepared a final video segment for the apocalypse:
We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event. We’ll play the National Anthem only one time, on the first of June [the day CNN launched], and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ before we sign off.
People thought he was joking. We have proof that he wasn’t. Below is the never-before-seen video the last living CNN employee will be required to play before succumbing to radiation poisoning, the plague, zombies, or whatever crazy end Turner saw coming.
It lives on CNN’s MIRA archive system, under the name TURNER DOOMSDAY VIDEO. Reflecting its status as an artifact, not to be used except in the ultimate emergency, it’s in standard definition, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, perfect for the cathode-ray tube televisions of the 1980s.
…I was an intern at CNN back in 2009. Specifically, I worked at the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Wolf was a nice enough guy, as people from Buffalo tend to be, but that’s not really so weird. What was weird was seeing the apocalypse video.
I was originally told about it by a college professor of mine, who had worked at CNN for over 20 years. It sounded mostly like a mythic joke, the kind of thing that Ted Turner, the all-around “eccentric billionaire” archetype, would mention offhand. Bison ranches, the America’s Cup, four girlfriends at once, the last word on the last day on earth—why not?
…Rumors of the doomsday tape’s existence have popped up from time to time, as early as 1988, in the case of the New Yorker, and as late as 2001, in the Daily News.
…The video didn’t take long to find; it turned up after a quick search in the database. There is no date attached, but the title reads “TURNER DOOMSDAY VIDEO.”
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