I’m old enough to remember Huntley and Brinkley. And Uncle Walter. I don’t think ABC really started to get off the ground until Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings springs to mind. I still remember Jennings’ safari suits.
Cronkite is a self-admitted leftwing socialist who flat out knowingly lied when he reported the US lost the TET Offensive.
Jennings, after the GOP/Newt landslide in 94, infamously reported the American people had a temper tantrum.
The economics of the US advertising business really couldn’t support three broadcast networks until the late 1960s.
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ABC News got the operation jump-started when they hired Harry Reasoner away from CBS News. At the time, the ABC audience research people were stunned when the numbers concerning “most liked” showed that while Uncle Walter was number one, Harry was number two.
Hiring Harry away got ABC a ratings boost which made the pay raise they gave him a bargain compared to the ad revenue jump they got from being able to charge more per ad.
Harry’s ego got the better of him, especially after the network hired Barbara Walters away from NBC as his co-anchor on the evening news. Out of that wreckage came World News Tonight with Peter Jennings in NYC, Frank Reynolds in Washington, and Max Robinson in Chicago.
What doomed that format was trying to having to divvy up the anchoring amongst the three. Robinson got unhappy real fast. Reynolds died of cancer. Jennings became “last man standing.” As “Gunga Dan” started acting weirder and weirder (”What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”), and Larry Tisch turned CBS into a closed-end fund, Tom Brokaw and Jennings battled for viewers. CBS News sank in the evening news wars.
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