7. CBS begins broadcasting to the West Coast
CBS continued its fifteen minute nightly newscast under the title Douglas Edwards With the News through the 1950s. One of the signature events of the decade was the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Without videotape or live satellite feeds, the event was recorded on film, flown to New York for processing, and broadcast that evening with commentary provided. As the 1950s wore on, the CBS newscast steadily lost viewers to the competition at NBC, with ABC news usually falling short of both competing networks (ABC entered television news in 1953). In the early 1960s CBS began casting around for a new news reporter, and settled on former UPI correspondent Walter Cronkite.
During the tenure of Douglas Edwards, CBS pioneered the use of videotape in order to record the broadcast on the East Coast for a time delayed broadcast of the program in the same time slot on the West Coast. Earlier, in 1951, the program was broadcast for the first time in the west through the use of a coaxial cable which connected New York to California. Edwards’ greeted his audience by referring to “everyone, coast to coast” to open his broadcasts, which were seen at 4.30 in the afternoon in California until the implementation of the tape delay broadcast. During Edwards’ tenure at the nightly news, from 1951 to 1962, CBS broadcast a fifteen minute Sunday night news broadcast called Up to the Minute at 11.00 PM, originally hosted by Walter Cronkite.