Ken Foote's Radio/TV Files: Friends With Cronkite
If you were working at a CBS affiliate in the 1960's or if you were an avid watcher of the CBS Evening News, you may have noticed something.
In television's early days, videotape was being developed and tested but it was not in widespread use. CBS first used it in 1956 to record Douglas Edwards And The News (the original name of the CBS Evening News) for playback to the West Coast. Early videotape recordings were on 2' tape called "Quad". Very few of the early videotape shows on network television exist today because of the high cost of tape, hence shows were recorded over and the tape reused.
One of the early videotape recordings I remember as a kid was not a full length show but a 10-second promo, or promotional announcement. KRLD Channel 4 carried The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite weekdays at 5:30pm (today's CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley airs weekdays at 5:30pm on CBS11). But at the end of the show and the ID stinger, "This is CBS", this promo came on with Cronkite. It was produced specifically for KRLD and for airing locally. It was a one camera shot of Cronkite looking into the camera and saying, "And now stay tuned for the news with my good friend Eddie Barker and the Channel 4 news team, the leader in the great southwest!"
What a great line! And if you were Eddie Barker (the news anchor and news director of Channel 4 back then), you were on Cloud 9 if you had this recording in your possession. After all, being a friend of Cronkite was the best thing short of being next to the good Lord! If you saw the episode of the Mary Tyler Moor Show in the 70's where Cronkite made an impromptu appearance, you would have seen Ted Baxter (played by Ted Knight) just drooling in Cronkite's presence in the WJM-TV newsroom. And it was that way in real life with some people! Ted thought Walter had come to take him to CBS! Of course, that didn't happen and Lou Grant (Edward Asner) was stuck with a cantankerous and vain news anchor!
As the story goes, Eddie had some people in his Channel 4 office one day and he wanted them to see the promo Cronkite did for him. But he forgot to check it ahead of time and when he put it in the videotape player, the promo read, "Now stayed tuned for the news with my good friend "so and so" and the Channel 11 news team, the leader in the great southeast!" or something to that effect. Needless to say, Eddie was embarrassed and as told to me, started yelling and screaming in the Channel 4 newsroom, throwing chairs and kicking trash cans! His friends got a kick out of it! Yet there really was a promo telling the DFW audience that Eddie Barker was a good friend of Walter Cronkite, because I saw it!
Today, we air a similar thing during CBS11 News at 5pm, with Scott Pelley telling our audience what's coming up on his show, but when he is done, he tells our audience to watch CBS 11 News at 6pm With Doug Dunbar and Karen Borta.
See you next time.
