CBS broadcast the Bicentennial Minutes from 1974 through 1976.
The Bicentennial Minutes were short educational television segments about American history and the Revolutionary era. CBS aired them nightly from July 4, 1974, through December 31, 1976. Each segment lasted about one minute and usually described an event or person connected with the date 200 years earlier.
The segments commonly opened with a narrator introducing a historical event and used the framing phrase “Two hundred years ago today.” They ended with a sign-off modeled on Walter Cronkite’s familiar news phrase, “And that’s the way it was.” Many CBS television personalities served as narrators.
The series was originally expected to conclude on July 4, 1976, the Bicentennial date, but it was extended through the end of the year. It ultimately aired 912 episodes. The program won an Emmy Award in 1976 and became one of the most recognizable broadcast features of the Bicentennial period.