8. Walter Cronkite and CBS News
Walter Cronkite was originally a print reporter, writing for UPI as a war and foreign correspondent before joining CBS, recruited by Edward R. Murrow. Cronkite understood the need to write tightly to include the important stories in a fifteen minute broadcast, but at the same time lobbied for the expansion of the broadcast to thirty minutes after becoming the program’s anchor in April 1962. In September of the following year the program was retitled The CBS Evening News when it expanded to the thirty minute format (which caused many CBS affiliates to expand their local news programs, creating an hour of news in the early evening).
Cronkite’s long experience as a writer for the wire services and CBS’s willingness to expand the budget for its flagship news program helped the network develop a reputation for quality reporting and writing as the 1960s unfurled, and by 1967 it surpassed its rival at NBC, The Huntley-Brinkley Report in audience. Cronkite’s enthusiastic support of the American space program, which was clearly conveyed to his viewers, also helped boost the network’s ratings at a time in which America’s astronauts were national heroes, as celebrated as movie and television stars. But it was another, seminal event for television news, which triggered its growth as an American icon.