Retro; New York City, May 1, 1947

[Bob1370]

Source: New York Times

Stations;

2-WCBS-TV (CBS)
4-WNBT (NBC, now WNBC)
5-WABD (DuMont, now WNYW-Fox)

AFTERNOONS

1:30
2-Live coverage, address of Mexican President Miguel Aleman at United Nations
4-Live coverage, address of Mexican President Miguel Aleman at United Nations
3:00
5-News
4:45
5-Financial News

EVENING

7:00
5-Small Fry Club with Bob Emery
7:30
5-Film Shorts
7:45
5-Soccer Game Preview
7:50
4-Television Newsreel with John Cameron Swayze
8:00
4-Juvenile Jury with Jack Barry
5-Show Case
8:15
News with Douglas Edwards (This was Channel 2's local news, NOT the CBS Evening News, since the local newscast was not seen outside New York until the CBS Television Network started sending programming to other cities in the spring of 1948.)
8:30
2-All New York Junior Hugh School Quiz
4-Variety Program, with Harriet Van Horne and James Beard
5-Swing For-e Golf
9:00
2-Judy Lynn, Songs
4-You Are An Artist with Jon Gnagy
9:05
2-Drama; No More Alice
9:15
4-Television Newsreel

 

[bpatrick]

If I'm not mistaken, Edwards began doing local newscasts
on Channel 2 in 1946 and was on every night the station was on.

There's some dispute as to when he went to the full network;
Brooks and Marsh give the date as May 3, 1948; Gary Paul Gates,
in "Air Time," his history of CBS News to 1978, says that Edwards
had anchored CBS's coverage of the 1948 political conventions
(both in Philadelphia) and that he was taking a vacation in Georgia
when he got a phone call with the offer to anchor a nightly network
newscast. According to Gates, Edwards resisted, and Frank Stanton
himself had to convince him that television was going to overtake radio,
and that Edwards would become as well-known (maybe more so) as
Edward R. Murrow (I'm not sure that happened; Murrow has achieved
such legendary proportions within CBS). Gates says the broadcast
began in the late summer of 1948; Barbara Matusow, in "The Evening
Stars," puts the date as August 15, 1948.

 

[Bob1370]

It could be that the real start date for the CBS Evening News could be either May 3, May 15, May 23 or June 21 of 1948.

May 3 was the earliest date CBS had any affiliation relationships outside the NYC market (the first was with WMAR-TV in Baltimore). Or the newscast could have launched on the 15th, when WBEN-TV in Buffalo launched; the 23rd, when WCAU-TV in Philadelphia signed on...or even June 21, when the network reached north to Boston and hooked up with what was then WNAC-TV on its sign-on day. By then, they'd have had a five station network to feed programming.

There were other stations interested in hooking up with CBS across the eastern and midwestern US, but the coaxial cable had to reach them before it made sense to try to carry anything like a live network newscast. The coax cable reached Chicago in '49, and made it to California in '51. By then the east coast was well networked.