A Guest in Our Living Room: The Television Newscaster Before the Rise of the Dominant Anchor

A popular misconception about television news in this country is that it has always been built around a dominant anchor. This historical study reveals an important era in the mid-1940s at CBS when the focus was on visualization possibilities for each story. The crew first considered the newscaster a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of broadcasting & electronic media 2007-09, Vol.51 (3), p.457-478
Main Author:	Conway, Mike
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	American history Analysis Audiovisual communications Evaluation Forecasts and trends Influence Journalists Market trend/market analysis Television broadcasting industry Television broadcasting of news Television journalists Television news Television programming
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	A popular misconception about television news in this country is that it has always been built around a dominant anchor. This historical study reveals an important era in the mid-1940s at CBS when the focus was on visualization possibilities for each story. The crew first considered the newscaster a liability and concentrated on graphics, film, animation, and other visual tools; later experimenting with what kind of person suited the visual medium. While three anchors, (Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, and Douglas Edwards), spanned 57 years at CBS, at least a dozen men sat in the chair from 1944 to 1948.
ISSN:	0883-8151 1550-6878