The rebuttal speech traces its origins to 1965 when then-President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, scheduled his State of the Union address for primetime television. Usually, Presidents gave the speech during the workday when few were watching. According to the Senate Historian, LBJ’s speech became a major TV event, promoted by the networks, with a possible audience three times the size of earlier SOTU speeches.
The Senate Minority Leader at the time was Republican Everett Dirksen who knew a thing or two about television. He pushed for equal time and in 1965, Dirksen and Congressman Gerald Ford taped a 30-minute rebuttal to the State of the Union. The TV networks aired the speech five days after the SOTU, but the public reaction was positive.