By Frazier Moore
The Associated Press

The Army-McCarthy hearings of spring 1954 have been called "the first great made-for-TV political spectacle," and in a jammed Senate caucus room this Washington miniseries hit its boiling point 50 years ago.

McCarthy himself

McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican, chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. His taste for smearing the targets of his anti-communist campaign, whether guilty or not, spawned the term "McCarthyism."

In the 30th day of hearings into "red influence" in the Army, McCarthy was undone by .

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness," erupted Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney representing the Army.

Welch had been interrupted during his cross-examination of Roy Cohn, a key McCarthy aide. McCarthy had accused Welch of trying to "foist on the committee" a young attorney from his own law firm who had communist ties.

"Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator," said Welch. "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of honor?"

In that moment, McCarthy lost his standing with the public. Charging him with abuse of his legislative powers, the Senate censured him a few months later. In May 1957, he died at age 48 of liver failure.

ABC's major decision

The cost for ABC to telecast the 188 hours of hearings was "upward of $600,000, which we could ill afford then," late ABC network President Leonard Goldenson wrote in his 1991 memoir.

But ABC didn't have a popular daytime schedule. So while CBS and NBC stuck to their lucrative schedules with shows such as Ding Dong School, The Big Payoff and The Guiding Light, ABC was drawing a crowd of some 20 million viewers who thrilled to its brand-new counterprogramming.