How the Beatles Went Viral in '64 (6 page)

During the first half of the 1963-1964 season, Sullivan’s show drew an average weekly audience of 21.2 million. And while those numbers didn’t make him the overall ratings champ—his CBS network-mates The Beverly Hillbillies were pulling in a whopping 35 million viewers a week—his was, by far, the biggest variety show on the air. On the night of February 9th, 1964, his audience jumped to 73 million, the largest television audience for an entertainment program in history to that point. In a country with a population 180 million, that represented 40% of all Americans. Significantly, in 1964 40% of all Americans were age 18 or under, with that year acknowledged as the final one of the baby boom. Of those, 35 million were between the ages of 8 and 18. And it would appear that virtually all of them were watching.

While undoubtedly there were some young people in America who didn’t see the Beatles that night, I personally have never met anyone who was between the ages of 5 and 50 at that time who claims they weren’t watching. The Washington Post went so far as to quip that on the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan “there wasn’t a single hubcap stolen in America,” which was meant as a dig on the character of the Beatles’ core audience, but which went on to be accepted as fact when it was reprinted in Newsweek. This urban legend was even repeated as truth in Hunter Davies’ 1968 authorized Beatles biography and by George Harrison in the Beatles’ “Anthology” documentary.

However, soon after the Sullivan broadcast, the Post’s Bill Gold followed up to make clear the story had been meant as a joke:

“It is with heavy heart that I must inform Newsweek that this report was not true. Lawrence R. Fellenz of 307 E. Groveton St., Alexandria, had his car parked on church property during that hour — and all four of his hubcaps were stolen. The Washington Post regrets the error, and District Liner Fellenz regrets that somewhere in Alexandria there lives a hipster who is too poor to own a TV set.”

Crime statistics aside, what is not in dispute is the fact that virtually every young person in America—and plenty of their parents—sat glued to the family TV set just after 8pm EST, when Ed Sullivan took the stage to introduce the band. “Now yesterday and today our theater’s been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that the city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool, who call themselves the Beatles.” Amid the escalating screams from the crowd, Sullivan continued: “Now tonight, you’re gonna twice be entertained by them. Right now, and again in the second half of our show. Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles. Let’s bring them on.”

And the sixties began.