It shouldn’t have been a close contest at all. Here on one side was a presidential candidate with a long legislative track record, a man who served in the House of Representatives, then the Senate, and then as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower. On the other hand here was this young pup of a presidential candidate, a man with few, if any, important pieces of legislation under his belt. But young John F. Kennedy knew something that Richard Nixon didn’t on the eve of their debate in 1960 – that TV was becoming the dominant medium, and how a candidate looks on screen would count for as much as what they would say. Kennedy won the election that year, and would become the first president to truly integrate TV into his publicity campaigns.

On this day, January 25th, in 1961, newly-inaugurated President John F Kennedy appeared on television for the first ever press conference broadcast over the new medium as well as radio. It was watched by some 21 million households. Within two weeks, Kennedy followed up with two more equally public press conferences, which altogether reached, according to some polls, around 90% of the people.

Kennedy’s youthfulness and charm was a great match for the visual medium, and Kennedy took advantage of it to bypass the filter press, which almost unanimously supported his rival Nixon. Televised presidential debates, meanwhile, disappeared for the next several elections – Nixon remembered all too well their burn, and his successor Lyndon Johnson was likewise wary. Televised debates reappeared in 1976 between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and have been around ever since.