If I asked if you remembered where you were 27 years ago Thursday, there’s a chance you wouldn’t. A lot of us have a hard time remembering 27 minutes ago.
Now, what if I asked if you remembered where you were during O.J. Simpson’s infamous “ride” in the white Bronco?
Because it’s the same question, just anchored by the forever keywords of O.J. and Bronco.
Of course, all of us old enough to recall that moment remember it. It was surreal. And weirdly impossible not to watch.
For those under the age of 30, O.J. Simpson was an NFL all-timer running back, who won a Heisman at USC and transitioned to life in La-La Land after football with movies, commercials and announcing stints. He was charged with killing his ex-wife and her friend, and when the authorities went to apprehend Simpson, he took it on the lam in the Ford belonging to his friend A.C. Cowling.
The “chase” unfolded before the eyes of a watchful nation for hours on that Friday evening on June 17, 1994.
It was one of “those” moments in our pop culture landscape, right there with the 1997 death of Princess Diana in an awful car crash and the 1999 death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of his wife and her sister.
It was reality TV even before we knew what reality TV was. It was the first time a Kardashian – Robert, in this case, one of O.J.’s defense attorneys – found a platform and public persona. It was for Court TV what the Persian Gulf War was for CNN.
No event gripped the country like Sept. 11, 2001, of course.
According to a Sony and Nielsen survey based on viewers’ recollections and memories of where they were during the Simpson chase, that video coverage was the sixth-most “impactful” TV event ever. The live coverage of Simpson’s “not guilty” verdict was third. The survey found that live coverage of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina ranked first and second, respectively. Coverage of the Challenger disaster in 1986 and Osama bin Laden’s death ranked fourth and fifth.
The rest of the top 10 was the 2011 tsunami, the Columbine shooting, the BP oil spill in 2010 and Princess Di’s funeral.
The Sony/Nielsen survey was done almost nine years ago; it reflected the time when TV was the most instantly gratifying platform for a populace that was trending more and more toward more instant gratification.
That live broadcast – hours long – changed the way network TV was produced in the 2010s. The public having the immediate chance to witness the hottest topic certainly paved the way for today’s social media excesses.
In this day and age of billions of people being socially isolated but globally connected through social media, I think Twitter would have melted if it had been around at the time of the O.J. chase.
Our consumption of the chase was insatiable, whether or not we recall the actual date.
And while our memories of the moment are clear, the resulting ways TV presents and we consume the news of the moment were transformed.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com.
Jay Greeson