4. Early scheduled television newscasts were only fifteen minutes in duration
After World War Two television in general grew quickly. American cities expanded into the suburbs, and the new houses where the baby boomers grew up quickly became equipped with television sets. In 1946 WCBT became WCBS and the beginnings of the CBS television network emerged. In 1948, Douglas Edwards, a veteran of CBS radio, launched the first regularly schedule nightly television news broadcast which was not a simulcast of a radio program. The CBS Television News was broadcast each weeknight at 7.30 PM, a fifteen minute recap of the day’s top stories, broadcast from New York City. NBC had a news program on the air earlier than CBS, but it was simply a film broadcast with a narration, a la newsreels seen in theaters.
NBC quickly joined the nightly news game, with the Camel News Caravan, featuring John Cameron Swayze and sponsored by Camel cigarettes. The program went on the air in February 1949, and when Camel cut back its sponsorship to only three days a week, was called the Camel News Caravan on those days and the Plymouth News Caravan (for Plymouth automobiles) on the days it was sponsored by that company. The program allowed Swayze to serve as an anchor and introduce filmed stories by reporters, including a young reporter from Wilmington, North Carolina named David Brinkley. The Camel News Caravan quickly eclipsed their CBS competition, and became the most watched news program until 1955.