3. World War Two shut down most television news
The technicians and engineers responsible for the broadcasting of television programs were in high demand during the Second World War, to support the war effort both in active duty in the services and in the support of America’s industrial effort. The manufacturing of television sets and consumer radios was suspended, with companies such as RCA and Crosley retooling their factories to manufacture war materials. Television cameras of the day were high maintenance, difficult to operate, and during the war impossible to repair due to the lack of available parts. Those television stations which remained on the air usually simply broadcast movies during the early years of American involvement in the war.
Nearly all the major newspapers and press organizations such as UPI had their own war correspondents, whose reports were censored by the military, and many of them became famous in television news following the war, Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney being just two. In 1944 television news returned in New York, when WCBT went back on the air with fifteen minute news broadcasts read by Ned Calmer. As with the news about the war from the correspondents overseas, reports were censored by the government and military. Most Americans still got their news from their trusted local newspapers and radio programs, and television was still entirely dependent on those two sources for the information it broadcast to its viewers.