Peter Jennings 15-minute newscast on ABC, 1966

[HGN2001]

Back in the '60s, ABC was a perennial third-rated network, and was the last of the big three to expand their nightly newscast from 15 minutes to a half-hour. At the time it occurred for ABC, and I believe it was around New Years, 1967, the anchor was a young Peter Jennings in his first go-round at the anchor desk.

Back then, as a young teenager, I appreciated ABC's move to place a younger guy in the anchor chair, and would actually tune in to this nightly newscast, and to this day recall the theme music. I knew that somewhere in my ancient reel-to-reel recordings, I had a fairly low-res copy of that theme music, taped from the TV on a really lo-fi home tape recorder, and I found that recording today.

Listening to the announcer promo both COMBAT and THE FUGITIVE, we can tell that this newscast happened on a Tuesday, and since both are listed as "in color", it had to be from the 1966-1967 season. I suspect that it was in the fall of 1966, because, if memory serves, the theme music changed when the show went to a half-hour after the first of 1967, and this was the older music from the 15-minute show.

Since I find no reference to any of this on the web, I thought I'd put it up on YouTube, with a few photos from around that time. The first is some kind of conceptual art regarding the set they used; the second is Jennings actually on the set, plus two more shots of his younger self. The final ABC NEWS screen is a fabrication by me based on the logo of around that time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDVjoqXAnRA

 

[bpatrick]

It was nice, if you were in late childhood or early teens, to see
a young guy in the anchor chair on ABC, but there was no way
Jennings could compete with Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley; critics
called him "that kid on ABC." Fortunately, Jennings made a smart
career move when he asked to be allowed to get out in the field;
I still consider him the premier anchor of the post-Cronkite era.

Does anyone recall that when Jennings was on for 15 minutes, ABC
had eight feeds of his newscast, between 5:30 and 7:30 PM? I've
mentioned this before, but I can remember in the fall of 1966 the
ABC station in Richmond carried him at 5:45 and I was completely
flabbergasted at a network newscast coming on that early in the
Eastern time zone. From January 1967 to September 1968 ABC still
had four feeds (5:30, 6, 6:30, and 7)-all to try to entice its affiliates
to carry the newscast when it wouldn't have to go up against CBS and/or
NBC. A lot of them might have stuck had Frank Reynolds (the first time)
not gotten the anchor job in '68; he was deemed too liberal for some station
owners, who dropped the broadcast, and it would essentially take Harry Reasoner
to bring them back.

Believe it or not, since we often talk about WBRC's doing its own world newscast,
they did carry Jennings the first time around; this was one of those stations that
dropped ABC's newscast with the coming of Reynolds. OTOH, there was never any
question of WBRC's carrying "World News Tonight" (even with both Reynolds and
Jennings), but 1978 was not 1968 either (ABC's newscast has been cleared in Birmingham
continuously since August 1972, first on WBRC, then--from 1996--on ABC33/40).

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

I believe the Peter Jennings newscast was still in black-and-white (except for occasions in 1966 during space shots and on the mid-term Election Night, when it originated from a studio already converted to color) until January, 1967 when it went to a half-hour.

I recall seeing a magazine ad from the end of 1966 with a photo of Jennings--the left-hand-side in black-and-white, the right-hand-side in color. The copy said something to the effect that "Starting January 9th, Peter Jennings gives you twice the news each weeknight n ABC". It went on to note that the newscast was expanding from 15 to 30 minutes, and from black-and-white to color.

HGN2001: Do you have the entire soundtrack of the newscast on audio tape?? If you do, you might want to upload it on You Tube. Since network newscast archives (especially at ABC and NBC) were spotty in that era, it's possible that no videotape or kinescope exists of that particular newscast. It also would be interesting to hear (if not being able to see) what network news was like in 1966.

If my memory serves me correct, ABC had wanted to expand it's early-evening news to a half-hour as far back as 1963 (when CBS and NBC did so), but it's affiliates refused to give up an extra fifteen minutes to expand what at the time was a newscast deeply mired in a distant third place in the ratings, and that it wasn't until late 1966 that the network finally got it's affiliates in-line and was able to expand the news to a half-hour as of January 9th, 1967.

 

[HGN2001]

HGN2001: Do you have the entire soundtrack of the newscast on audio tape?? If you do, you might want to upload it on You Tube. Since network newscast archives (especially at ABC and NBC) were spotty in that era, it's possible that no videotape or kinescope exists of that particular newscast. It also would be interesting to hear (if not being able to see) what network news was like in 1966.

Unfortunately I do not. I was sure that I had a recording of the theme music, because I liked it, so I went on a hunt to find it. Then I had to go on an Internet hunt for any kind of images from that era, and there aren't very many.

What I also found in my audio tapes is a recording of what I believe is the revamped opening later that year, but no full broadcasts. I may upload that when I can get around to it.

I believe your dates are all correct regarding the dates of the change from 15-minutes to a half-hour.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I have seen a promo for this newscast in an old copy of Readers Digest.
Evidently it must have been from 1967. It had Jennings face divided with a line
down the middle, half in color and half in black and white.

The message being that his newscast was expanding to 30 minutes
and going to color.