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Walter Cronkite Dies

oldiesfan6479 said:
Does anyone know when the story first hit the internet/wires/networks,
etc., and did CBS-TV air any bulletins prior to 8:30 ET/5:30 PT?
Click to expand...

Subsequent to my earlier post, I read that Katie interrupted the Eastern/
Central prime time feed at 8:13 ET with the (first?) CBS bulletin.

And no, the show's dialogue just before the bulletin was not "...and I
gave it a great deal of thought, Grandpa..." ;) (I think Uncle Walter
would appreciate the reference.)

Not only was CBS News scrambling, but apparently also CBS Air Control,
as they must have enabled at least a partial Mountain Time Zone feed.

I had the 8/7 program on in the background from about 7:07-7:29 PT
in Phoenix and did not notice any interruption.

"Normal" Mountain Time Zone CBS viewers: was your 7:00 MT show also
clean during this same time period?
 
I'm in MDT, but was watching the cables at the time. However, I did notice that CBS was delayed about 8-9 minutes in the MDT tonight as it entered the local news block at 10. I assume due to the cut-in...
 
bg02445 said:
Walter Cronkite died at the age of 92 today shortly before 8:00 PM Eastern.
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Check my links ... many of them ... on the Dallas-Fort Worth board.

Walter Cronkite had quite a career.
 
ricksegers said:
Of course I was raised in a Huntley-Brinkley household.
Click to expand...

As was I - and a Nightly household after Chet retired.

If I wanted to see Cronkite I usually had to go across town to my grandparents'. OTOH my father, after my folks' divorce, preferred Smith-Reasoner on the Alphabet.

ixnay
(who learned of Cronkite's death from foxnews.com and Tim Russert's from FNC)
 
ixnay said:
ricksegers said:
Of course I was raised in a Huntley-Brinkley household.
Click to expand...

As was I - and a Nightly household after Chet retired.

If I wanted to see Cronkite I usually had to go across town to my grandparents'. OTOH my father, after my folks' divorce, preferred Smith-Reasoner on the Alphabet.

ixnay
(who learned of Cronkite's death from foxnews.com and Tim Russert's from FNC)
Click to expand...

Sounds like my family: my grandfather wouldn't watch anyone but Cronkite,
my dad was a John Chancellor fan, and I watched Smith and Reasoner. In
Tampa you could do it: ABC came on at 6, NBC at 6:30, CBS at 7. My
grandfather passed away in 1975; my dad switched to CBS when Dan Rather
took over in 1981, and I stuck with ABC until Frank Reynolds passed away, at
which point I started watching Brokaw. Nowadays my dad watches Katie,
and I'm back with ABC and Charlie.

But in all fairness, Uncle Walter was the last of a generation that started with
Murrow and earned the following and trust of virtually an entire nation (well,
maybe not, since Mike Wallace is still living but he didn't start out as a bona-fide
journalist). There are too many choices for news today; it really doesn't matter
a great deal if you prefer Katie, Charlie, Brian, Bill O'Reilly, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Lester Holt--or if you don't even get your news from television.

Rest well, Walter, Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Harry Reasoner, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Douglas Edwards, John Chancellor, Frank Reynolds, Peter Jennings, and those radio news stars who were less visible when television got started. We shall not see your likes again.
 
ixnay said:
ricksegers said:
Of course I was raised in a Huntley-Brinkley household.
Click to expand...

As was I - and a Nightly household after Chet retired.
Click to expand...

I didn't have a chance to watch Cronkite growing up in Southeast Mississippi. It was after moving to the Houston suburbs for a few years during the '70s that I had the chance to truly appreciate the man. I didn't hear of his passing until early this morning as I went to bed early and didn't watch TV at all. But this morning I heard former WFLA-TV/8 anchor Bob Hite, who recently retired from the NBC affiliate, remembered by phone knowing Cronkite --- his father worked for CBS when Bob was a kid and was also an avid boater --- and one situation in which he remembered being scolded for coming too close to Cronkite's boat and being too young to know him as a nationally known news personality, but as "Uncle Walter".

America has truly lost a treasure.
 
Here's what tonight's evening newscasts had about Walter Cronkite:

On CBS, Katie Couric hosted a special edition of the Saturday CBS Evening News, devoted nearly entirely to remembering Walter Cronkite.

NBC Also devoted a good block of time to remembering Walter Cronkite. They featured the CBS Special Report announcing his death in nearly its entirety. The fill-in anchor, Savannah Guthrie interviewed Brian Williams, who was presumably vacationing in Yarmouth, ME, on his thoughts of Cronkite.

I didn't see what ABC did however.
 
ABC began and ended World News with coverage--the opening segment included comments from Charlie, Katie and Brian.
 
In the broadcast world where other stations are loathe to even admit their competition exists, it speaks volumes about what Walter Cronkite meant to journalism [and CBS] where all of the big three newscasts [as well as some cable outlets] led off with the death of Walter.
 
I personally stopped watching the CBS Evening News after Cronkite retired in 1981 because I knew that nobody, especially Dan Rather, could replace him.

Cronkite's departure, to me at least, was the end of pure journalism in television news and the start of "entertainment and personality" newscasts.

When I think of the stature of Walter Cronkite, and compare it to some (so-called) anchors on TV today, I just shake my head in disgust.
 
KML-224 said:
Did anybody catch the CBS tribute to him on Sunday at 7 PM EDT?
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Yes I did and it appears to me that tribute was pre-recorded a few years ago.
I point as an example to Katie Couric's hair. Today it's short; in the tribute it was long.

George Clooney's hair was darken to fit a role in a movie he was in a few years ago.

So I think this tribute was in the can and ready to go long before Cronkite passed away last Friday.

It's not unusual to have obits ready for famous people before they pass away.
 
Mark_Giardina said:
I think this tribute was in the can and ready to go long before Cronkite passed away last Friday.

It's not unusual to have obits ready for famous people before they pass away.
Click to expand...

The premature leak of Bob Hope's obituary comes to mind...
 
I thought the Cronkite special was most fitting,
but I found a few things that jarred me:

1. The absence of Bob Schieffer and Tom Brokaw.
There were people from other networks: Barbara
Walters, Ted Koppel, Charlie Gibson, and Brian
Williams (Diane Sawyer too, but she used to be
at CBS). Why not Brokaw? And Schieffer did
anchor the CBS Evening News in the interval between
Dan and Katie.

2. The juxtaposition of Cronkite's interview with JFK the
day the CBS Evening News expanded from 15 minutes
to 30 with clips of coverage of JFK's assassination and
funeral procession a liitle over two months later. Looking
at JFK on September 2, 1963, it's hard, even with hindsight,
to realize he had less than three months to live. But that
interview did provide a clue as to how he might have handled
Vietnam had he lived to serve a second term--we might not
have become as involved as we did, if at all. Many historians
would argue that the '60s would have been a different decade
had he lived. (BTW, the man saying, "He's been shot! Lee Oswald
has been shot!" is Tom Pettit of NBC, the only network that had
that event live.)

3. The clip of the Beatles that Cronkite showed in December 1963.
Jack Paar always claimed credit for being the first to show the
Beatles, in a film clip from Bournemouth, on January 31, 1964,
nine days before their first live appearance on Ed Sullivan. And
I question whether Sullivan called Cronkite after the broadcast;
he'd seen the Beatles while in England in the summer of '63 and
had made a deal with Brian Epstein for three appearances in
February 1964 the week after JFK's death.

4. Cronkite on radio during World War II, commenting on the North
African campaign. I didn't know until I looked it up that he had
a syndicated radio show at the time, in addition to his duties with
United Press. There was no mention of his time at WTOP (WUSA)
Washington, where he gave lucid descriptions of the fighting in
Korea (which may have attracted CBS in the first place).

But I do think it was a fitting tribute, even down to the fact that
they showed Cronkite's lighter side (being a Grateful Dead fan, his
appearance on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," etc.).
 
Cronkite's appearance on the Mary Tyler Moore show was a classic. I especially like the part where Ted Baxter wanted to read his Emmy-award winning newscast in its entirety to Cronkite on the way to the airport. Cronkite turns to Lou Grant and said "I'll get you for this."
 
Which cable network currently airs "MTM", if at all? Did they show that episode?
 
ricksegers said:
Bob1370 said:
He set the gold standard for journalism in every medium--television, radio, print and online--with a combination of intelligence, integrity and dedication to the truth that he brought to every broadcast from the time he joined CBS at the end of World War II, to his retirement in 1981--and to the documentaries and commentaries he wrote, produced and presented even in his busy "retirement" years.

He'll always be the role model for anyone in the profession of journalism.
Click to expand...

Gee you must be his press agent. I never could see what the big deal was with Uncle Walter. He was never any better than a host of other TV news readers. He made his career by breaking down with JFK murder and the moon landing even though it is not the most professional thing to do. Of course I was raised in a Huntley-Brinkley household.
Click to expand...
That didn't take long.

I've hardly heard those guys mentioned.

I think someone mentioned one of them in the coverage I've seen.

As for me, Uncle Walter was the only news anchor we watched. With Eric Severaid doing commentary.
 
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