General Electric Theater - Reagan Fired By General Electric

Reagan Fired By General Electric

Reagan was fired by General Electric in 1962 in response to his reference to the TVA as one of the problems of "big government". Reagan would subsequently reiterate his points in his famous 1964 televised speech for Republican presidential nominee Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona entitled, "A Time for Choosing":

One such considered above criticism, sacred as motherhood, is TVA. This program started as a flood control project; the Tennessee Valley was periodically ravaged by destructive floods. The Army Engineers set out to solve this problem. They said that it was possible that once in 500 years there could be a total capacity flood that would inundate some 600,000 acres (2,400 km2). Well, the engineers fixed that. They made a permanent lake which inundated a million acres (4,000 km²). This solved the problem of floods, but the annual interest on the TVA debt is five times as great as the annual flood damage they sought to correct. Of course, you will point out that TVA gets electric power from the impounded waters, and this is true, but today 85 percent of TVA's electricity is generated in coal burning steam plants. Now perhaps you'll charge that I'm overlooking the navigable waterway that was created, providing cheap barge traffic, but the bulk of the freight barged on that waterway is coal being shipped to the TVA steam plants, and the cost of maintaining that channel each year would pay for shipping all of the coal by rail, and there would be money left over.

The publicity Reagan gained in part from this speech paved the way for his election as governor of California in 1966, when he unseated the two-term Democrat Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Sr.

Michael Reagan, adopted son of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, contends that Attorney General of the United States Robert F. Kennedy pressured GE to cancel The General Electric Theater or at least to fire Reagan as the host if the program were to continue. The series was not dropped because of low ratings but political intervention, Michael Reagan still maintains. Michael Reagan said that Robert Kennedy told GE officials that the company would receive no federal contracts so long as Reagan was host of their showcase television series. Michael Reagan noted the irony that his father's dismissal propelled Reagan into the political arena, and eighteen years afterwards, Reagan would take the oath of office as the oldest person thus far in history to become U.S. President. According to Michael Reagan, Kennedy's directive is another example of the "law of unintendend consequences." Had Kennedy stayed out of GE contract matters, there would have been no Governor or President Reagan, speculates Michael Reagan.

Don Herbert, a television personality well known as the host of Watch Mr. Wizard, appeared as the "General Electric Progress Reporter," adding a scientific touch to the institutional advertising pitch. The show was produced by Revue Studios, whose successor-in-interest, NBC Universal Television, is co-owned by GE.

Following General Electric Theater's cancellation in 1962, the series was replaced in the same time slot by the short-lived GE-sponsored GE True, hosted by Jack Webb.

On March 17, 2010, General Electric presented Reagan's widow Nancy Davis Reagan with video copies of 208 episodes of General Electric Theater, to be donated to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

On April 20, 2010, a long "lost" live episode of the General Electric Theater was uncovered by NBC writer Wayne Federman who was working on a television retrospective for the Reagan Centennial Celebration. The episode, from December 1954, was noteworthy because it teamed Ronald Reagan with James Dean. Highlights were broadcast on the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and Good Morning America.