A local broadcast preserved in real time
A recording posted on X by Daniel McFadin captures approximately 15 minutes of NY1’s morning programming beginning at 8:30 a.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2001, according to McFadin’s post as reported by the New York Post. Pat Kiernan is shown handling routine local coverage, including weather and primary-election news, during his “In the Papers” segment.
The recording is not a complete account of the attacks. Its narrower value is documentary: it shows a local newsroom responding as information arrived. NY1 moved to images of smoke above the World Trade Center and a camera view from the Empire State Building while journalists worked to establish what had happened, according to the Post’s account of the footage.
Reporting before the full picture was known
The broadcast moved from an initial report of a fire to information that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. After a second plane hit the South Tower, NY1 journalists concluded that the planes had been hijacked and that the incident was likely a terrorist attack, the Post reported. Kiernan later described the South Tower as no longer standing and assessed that hundreds or thousands of people could be injured as a result of the collapse.
The attacks also involved the Pentagon and Flight 93, which came down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked the planes, and 2,977 people were killed, according to Britannica.
The segment within NY1’s larger response
The surviving recording represents only a brief portion of NY1’s response. The network later shifted to continuous, commercial-free reporting for days, according to its account of the journalists who covered the attacks in NY1’s anniversary feature. That response came from a channel that had launched on Sept. 8, 1992, as a 24-hour local news operation focused on New York City, according to TV Technology.
How emergency alerts work today
New York City residents now have official alert channels beyond broadcast television. According to NYC Emergency Management, the free Notify NYC mobile application provides up-to-the-minute information about emergency situations and planned events. The New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities also lists Notify NYC, the Ready NYC app, the Advance Warning System and Wireless Emergency Alerts among the city’s emergency-alert resources.
The recording therefore preserves a transition in the work of local television journalism: a scheduled morning program became live coverage of a catastrophe while the facts were still emerging. Its significance is less a single definitive account than a record of how journalists adjusted their reporting as the situation changed.
