6. The evening news began to gain importance for the networks
In 1956 the Camel News Caravan was replaced on NBC by a fifteen minute news broadcast featuring two anchors, Chet Huntley in New York and David Brinkley in Washington. The removal of the popular John Cameron Swayze drew criticism, even President Eisenhower commented unfavorably, and the new show lost much of the Camel News Caravan’s audience to CBS. By 1958 the show had recovered much of the lost audience, largely due to the crisp, sardonic writing style of David Brinkley, who reported mostly on the political scene in Washington DC. Chet Huntley concentrated on the national, international, and business news. The show retained the fifteen minute format until 1963, when it followed CBS in expanding the broadcast to a half hour.
Although they were locked together in the public mind, Huntley and Brinkley seldom saw each other, remaining for the most part in separate cities. During the 1960s space race neither anchor was particularly interested in covering the manned missions, and the program lost viewers to the space enthusiast Walter Cronkite on CBS. The Huntley-Brinkley Report nonetheless was one of the first news programs to prove profitable for its network, with advertising revenues which exceeded those of NBC’s prime time programs when compared individually. The team remained a fixture of the network’s lineup until it disbanded upon Huntley’s retirement in 1970.