<P> Prior to 1934, the annual message was delivered at the end of the calendar year, in December . The ratification of the 20th Amendment on January 23, 1933, changed the opening of Congress from early March to early January, affecting the delivery of the annual message . Since 1934, the message or address has been delivered to Congress in January or February . </P> <P> The Twentieth Amendment also established January 20 as the beginning of the presidential term . In years when a new president is inaugurated, the outgoing president may deliver a final State of the Union message, but none has done so since Jimmy Carter sent a written message in 1981 . In 1953 and 1961, Congress received both a written State of the Union message from the outgoing president and a separate State of the Union speech by the incoming president . Since 1989, in recognition that the responsibility of reporting the State of the Union formally belongs to the president who held office during the past year, newly inaugurated Presidents have not officially called their first speech before Congress a "State of the Union" message . </P> <P> In 1936, President Roosevelt set a precedent when he delivered the address at night . Only once before--when Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to order the U.S. into World War I--had a sitting president addressed Congress at night . </P> <P> Warren Harding's 1922 speech was the first to be broadcast on radio, albeit to a limited audience, while Calvin Coolidge's 1923 speech was the first to be broadcast across the nation . Harry S. Truman's 1947 address was the first to be broadcast on television . Lyndon B. Johnson's address in 1965 was the first delivered in the evening . Three years later, in 1968, television networks in the United States, for the first time, imposed no time limit for their coverage of a State of the Union address . Delivered by Lyndon B. Johnson, this address was followed by extensive televised commentary by, among others, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Milton Friedman . Ronald Reagan's 1986 State of the Union Address is the only one to have been postponed . He had planned to deliver it on January 28, 1986 but postponed it for a week after learning of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and instead addressed the nation on the day's events . Bill Clinton's 1997 address was the first broadcast available live on the World Wide Web . </P>

Purpose of president's state of the union address