Thursday was the anniversary of the first televised presidential news conference. The grainy black-and-white broadcast aired Jan. 19, 1955, featuring President Dwight D. Eisenhower who addressed such topics as problems with China and battles with Congress over the budget.

Before taking questions from the press corps, he prophetically pondered aloud if such broadcasting would be a distraction. If he only knew.

This was in the innocent 1950s and Ike seemed awkward in front of the camera, stumbling over some of his responses. This was the beginning of a new age, he and the rest of America just didn’t know it yet.

A little over three years later, Eisenhower would again make presidential television history with the first live color broadcast from the WRC-TV studio in Washington, D.C. Officials bragged about how the telecast would be taped by a studio in far-away California and could be shown at a later time anywhere in the country as if it were live.

With the advent of this new technology, Ike again predicts that the public will come to expect information from the nation’s leaders as rapidly as possible. Spot on.

Today, we demand instant information. Even the advent of the 24-hour news network wasn’t enough, so along came the internet. That wasn’t fast enough, so now we have Facebook and Twitter.

If Eisenhower were alive today to see the media landscape, what would think? What would be his reaction to the 2016 presidential election?

First, he would see that issues never change. China is still a menace and working with Congress on the budget never gets any easier.

Second, after harking back to his early T.V. appearances, he would realize that his bumbling on camera wouldn’t cut it anymore. He would see that being a decorated general and war hero, and strong president are not enough anymore. One now has to be a showman first and leader second.

Today, with the Friday inauguration of President Donald Trump fresh in our minds, it may be time for us learn a thing or two as well.

We must look beyond the bright lights and the hype to find the substance. Plain showmanship isn’t enough.

And, a free and viable press is essential to our democracy, but those in the media often themselves become the news and that puts things out of balance.

Now, 62 years after that historic first televised, we have indeed entered a new world. Is it for the better? That may take an historical prospective from 2079 to determine.

Dale Hogg