On this day in 1983, the Disney Channel began broadcasting for the first time. To celebrate this day in Disney history, we thought it would be fun to find someone who was working there at the very second that it all started and located Joanne Crawford Duner. Joanne was kind enough to channel us into the very moment that it all began. “I feel so privileged to have been present on that historic day when the Disney Channel went ‘live’. I had been working at the Channel for about four months, starting as a marketing coordinator fresh off my role as Disneyland Ambassador in 1982. I remember there were about 25 of us standing around a television set in our offices in Burbank around 7 a.m. on that fateful day. We watched as the screen went from black to the start of the Disney Channel’s programming, with the first show being Good Morning Mickey, a compilation of favorite Mickey Mouse cartoons (kicking off with the classic short The Nifty Nineties, pictured above). That became a mainstay of the early morning programming for several years. It was so exciting to witness this milestone, as many of us had already been working hard at marketing the Channel to cable operators across the country, getting them to include the Disney Channel amongst their cable network line-up to their subscriber base. It was so rewarding to finally see the Channel go on air, and we knew we were witnessing a major event in Disney’s history.”
