Video: 'The Beatles, John Lennon and the More Popular Than Jesus Controversy (1966)' (boycott coverage at 0:08-5:26)

(Tuesday, August 2, 1966) — The station manager of WAQY-AM radio in Birmingham, Alabama, urged listeners today to boycott record stores and bookstores that sold music and memorabilia of The Beatles, four days after the American teen magazine Datebook reprinted John Lennon’s claim in a British newspaper that “we’re more popular than Jesus now.”