Network News is Born!

If your over 40, you remember a day when the three big networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) dominated the television news landscape.

Indeed, the 1960s and 1970s were the “golden age” of network news, featuring personalities like Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and Howard K. Smith. There were also new emerging (and future) stars like Dan Rather (CBS), Tom Brokaw (NBC) and Peter Jennings (ABC).

The list of news anchors for CBS News is a rather short one for 57 years (or until 2005): Douglas Edwards (1948-1962), Walter Cronkite (1962-1981) and Dan Rather (1981-2005). Since 2005, there have been five anchors: Bob Schieffer (2005-2006), Katie Couric (2006-2011), Scott Pelly (2011-2017), Jeff Glor (2017-2019) and Norah O’Donnell (2019-present).

It was Walter “That’s The Way It Is” Cronkite who broke the news on John F. Kennedy’s assassination and was the guide to man’s landing on the moon. In many ways, these two events sandwiched the Vietnam era of the 1960s. And network news carried it all. In the 1980s, with the advent of the Cable News Network (CNN), news moved from a daily half-hour “magazine” to 24/7/365.

Suddenly, news was NOW…or really the NOWS.

And it all started on this date 73 years ago today.