The Decade That Shaped Television News
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The Decade That Shaped Television News CBS in the 1950s Sig Mickelson 2 e' The Decade i That Shaped About the Author SIG MICKELSON is aResearch Fellow Television News at the Hoover Institution at Stanford CBS in the 1950s University and Distinguished Professor of Journalism at the Manship School of Sig Mickelson Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. He has served as Vice President This insider's account, written by the first of CBS, Inc., and was the first president of president of CBS News, documents the CBS News. He is the author of America's meteoric rise of television news during the Other Voice (Praeger, 1983) and From 1950s. From its beginnings as anovelty with Whistle Stop to Sound Bite (Praeger, 1989), little importance as adisseminator of news, and the editor of The First Amendment— to an aggressive rival to newspapers, radio, The Challenge of New Technology and news magazines, television news (Praeger, 1989). became the most respected purveyor of information on the American scene despite insufficient funding and the absence of trained personnel. Mickelson's fascinating account shows the arduous and frequently critical steps undertaken by inexperienced staffs in the development of television news, documentaries, and sports broadcasts. He provides atreasure trove of facts and anecdotes about plotting in the corridors, the ascendancy of stars such as Edward R. Murrow, and the retirement into oblivion of the less favored. In alittle more than a decade, television reshaped American life. How it happened is afascinating story. ISBN: 0-275-95567-2 Praeger Publishers 88 Post Road West Westport, CT 06881 Jacket design by Double R Design, Inc. Also by the Author From Whistle Stop to Sound Bite Four Decades of Politics and Television "[Mickelson] was amajor figure in the television industry and tells us, firsthand, about how television started getting involved with the political process. He is awonderful raconteur, and his book is an extremely lively and fascinating one." American Political Science Review Books of Related Interest Fighting for the First Amendment Stanton of CBS vs. Congress and the Nixon White House By Corydon B. Dunham "History serves dramatically to illustrate the need for continuing public awareness that our press freedoms must be protected. This is vital as we enter the new Information Age with all its promise for us and our descendants. That's why Corydon Dunham's book Fighting for the First Amendment is must reading." Walter Cronkite (from the Foreword) The Political Performers CBS Broadcasts in the Public Interest By Michael D. Murray This examination of key CBS broadcasts and the people behind them that helped to establish the network as the prototype for excellence provides aunique perspective on the early era of broadcasting. ISBN -275-95567- 0 0 00 > 1 1 1 11 1 9 780275 955670 11 THE DECADE THAT SHAPED TELEVI51011 HEWS C55 in the 19505 5ig Mickelson Westport, Connecticut PRAEGER London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mickelson, Sig. The decade that shaped television news :CBS in the 1950s / Sig Mickelson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. )and index. ISBN 0-275-95567-2 (alk. paper) 1. Television broadcasting of news—United States—History. 2. CBS Television Network—History. I. Title. PN4888.T4M43 1998 070.1'95—dc21 97-32044 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright 0 1998 by Sig Mickelson All ri¡„hts reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-32044 ISBN: 0-275-95567-2 First published in 1998 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 For my extended family: Elena Ann and Alan; Alberto and Ina Alan, Michael, Trevor, Lars, Alexa „ If man could learn from history what lessons it might teach us .. the light which experience gives is alantern on the stern. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE T. Allsop's Recollections Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction: The Decade That Shaped Television News 1 The Search for a Road Map 1 2 The First Awkward Steps 13 3 A New Star on the Horizon 25 4 Driving Television's Golden Spike 33 5 A New Species of Documentary: The Birth of "See It Now" 43 6 Breaking New Ground 51 7 Blacklisting and the Exploitation of Fear 61 8 Not So Strange Bedfellows: Politics and Television 71 9 Television News Comes of Age 83 10 The Great Airplane Race 97 11 The Corporation Declares a Cease-Fire 111 x Contents 12 Aftermath of the Cease-Fire 123 13 Spare the Rod but Don't Spoil the Picture 133 14 Combat in the Corporate Stratosphere 141 15 The Changing of the Guard 153 16 Filling the "See It Now" Void: The Birth of "CBS Reports" 161 17 The Happy Couple: Pigskin and TV Picture Tube 173 18 Carrying the Olympic Torch to Television 183 19 In Pursuit of the Dollar 195 20 The End of the Decade 207 Notes 225 Bibliography 233 Index 237 Acknowledgments The source of most of the information in the volume that follows were files in my home office or the Mickelson Archive at the Library of the Wiscon- sin Historical Society in Madison. Special credit is due to Ms. Janice O'Connell, then amember of the library's staff, who arranged for the ac- quisition of my files and supervised their classification and filing. Among my colleagues at CBS News during the late 1940s and the 1950s who cheerfully and exhaustively recalled for me their experiences in the formative period of television news were Walter Cronkite, Chet Burger, Don Hewitt, Phil Scheffler, and Joe Wershba. Other important and useful sources of background included Dr. Frank Stanton and Jack Cowden. The research department of CBS Television was particularly helpful in searching out data regarding television news ratings and growth in television set den- sity through the entire period from 1946 through 1961. The CBS Law Library arranged access to CBS Annual Reports for the same years and made copies for me of pages that were useful in carrying out the project. Jesse Sheppard combed through files of the New York Times and other periodicals, making copies of significant items relating to the development of the thesis of the book. The clippings he delivered are in themselves an interesting running history of television news broadcasting in the 1950s. Introduction: The Decade That Shaped Television News Like Caesar's Gaul, the history of network television news can be divided into three parts: the start-up phase beginning with tentative, experimental steps as early as mid-1946 and continuing to full maturity by the end of 1960; the period of consolidation and refinement leading to peaks in au- dience size and prestige between 1961 and 1980; and the era of decline in both ratings and influence beginning in 1981. The concentration here will be on the first of these periods, recounted largely through the growth to maturity of CBS News. The largely experimental CBS television operations date from 1946, when there was an expectation that receivers would shortly be back on the market after awartime shut-down. The first experimental postwar efforts to broadcast news began that same year. CBS's news staff grew from a total of six recruited in late 1946 to more than 400 by the end of 1960. The network was not alone in experimenting with news. NBC in 1946 was farming out its once a week news programming to an outside contractor. The first regularly scheduled five nights a week network news broadcasts began on both NBC and CBS in the fall of 1948. The first national political conventions to be covered by television were transmitted to anetwork ex- tending from Boston on the north to Washington, D.C., on the south and Pittsburgh on the west in the summer of 1948. In 1948 there were only approximately 400,000 television homes in the entire nation, concentrated largely in the Northeast. By January 1, 1950, ,iv • Introduction there were more than 3 million and by 1960 more than 46 million, scat- tered across the entire nation. By 1961, patterns for news and information broadcasts had been for- mulated, staffs employed, and audiences built, and prestige was running high. The news consuming public was apparently reasonably well pleased by what it saw. The start-up phase was over. There may have been adecade in American history that witnessed more profound changes in American life than the 1950s, but one would have to look long and hard for its equal. A little more than four years had passed since the conclusion of along and brutal war that had converted the nation from a civilian-based economy to a wartime footing. Now normality had returned and the good life was reappearing in unprecedented measure. Factories were reconverting to civilian goods from concentration on war material. Luxuries were reappearing on market shelves. And society was changing dramatically. Center cities began losing population as city dwell- ers rushed to the suburbs. Colleges and universities were engulfed in aflood of new students, many of them war veterans. A network of superhighways began to reach out across all portions of the nation, and motels mush- roomed at their junctions. A web of air routes followed asimilar pattern and airports were expanded or new ones built to accommodate agrowing army of air travelers.