Walter Cronkite: 1916-2009

I assume by now the country has learned of the death of journalist/news anchor Walter Cronkite. I grew up in the era of Dan Rather hosting the CBS Evening News and so I do not personally recall when Cronkite was the anchor but I knew of him through his appearances on television programs and his distinctive voice isn't to be forgotten if you've heard it. I've been watching the coverage of the various tributes to Cronkite and those who are hard-core fans/appreciators of Cronkite will get the irony in this situation that's unfolded. He was known to not be very happy about 24/7 news channels, cable news specifically...because in his opinion he felt all-news networks politicized the coverage and those who watched cable news were watching because of the viewpoints of broadcasters and talk-show hosts about what's happening, and that they weren't watching to find out the in's and out's and facts of what's happening.

So, I find it very ironic that the 24/7 cable news stations that he often spoke out against are the very same outlets who are airing tributes to him even as I write this blog entry. I clicked over to CBS and they're airing their usual line-up of programs...no salute, no tribute, no fanfare. If anything demonstrates just how times have changed, the cable news channels of CNN and MSNBC are interviewing cable news anchors and personalities: the likes of Brian Williams, Sam Donaldson, Bob Schieffer, Morley Safer, Don Hewitt, Tom Brokaw, and several radio broadcasters have given their thoughts of Cronkite. Of course, watching cable news the last several hours I could have missed a CBS news-break or something but I just find it bizarre that, as far as I know, they hadn't said anything on their broadcast network. Perhaps the early morning newscasts will offer some commentary about the broadcaster who brought the network millions of viewers? If they don't, well, that's the way it is...

Anyway, it just seemed ironic that a lot of Cronkite's admirers in the news business shared their thoughts of him via the 24/7 cable news channels instead of on CBS...and I could be wrong but it appears as if CBS didn't want to interrupt their programming with any lengthy salute or tribute. Even more ironic is Cronkite passes away a few days before the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing of Apollo-11...and Cronkite is considered the face and voice of NASA's man on the moon coverage in 1969. It's his broadcast that typically gets singled out and re-played. July 16, 1969 was the launch and July 20, 1969 was the day of the moon landing. Just wrapping up on Fox News Channel was an hour long program about the Apollo-11 moon landing. It was a taped program...I assume contracts prevented the network from postponing the air-date. After it was over, a live transmission aired featuring a 5 minute look at Cronkite...but then it went into regularly scheduled programming of The O'Reilly Factor, a repeat from earlier in the evening.

Walter Cronkite was a radio correspondent/journalist during World War Two...and he joined CBS in 1950 and did a multitude of reports and stories. He hosted a series called You Are There for a total of four years, 1953-1957. Afterward he became the host of The Twentieth Century, a documentary program, which ran nine years, 1957-1966. Afterward, it was replaced by The Twenty-First Century, again hosted/narrated by Cronkite. This version remained on the air through 1970.

Eight years earlier, though, in 1962, he became the anchor of the CBS Evening News. It was in this position that he relayed and broadcast all of the events that took place in American and world history from 1962 through 1981. Dan Rather took over the anchor position and became a fixture in that position for decades, too. Cronkite continued to appear in news stories and remained a face/voice in news and current affairs programming. He lent his voice to a variety of projects...becoming the narrator/host on a 4-part series called Dinosaur for the A&E Network in 1996.

In his later years he became more known for his appearances on, and his narrations of, a wide variety of documentary programs ranging from sports to science to all points in American and world history. He often narrated documentaries on PBS. He hosted and or narrated several programs of that vein in this millennium. For those who think Cronkite slipped into obscurity and never did much after the 1980s you'll be in for a treat when you browse his credits at the Internet Movie Data Base.

1916-2009.

Paul Harvey: 1918-2009

The radio commentator who spoke directly to the American public and all points around the world via Armed Forces radio died on February 28th at the age of 90. Paul Harvey could be heard on over a thousand radio stations, the often quoted total being no fewer than 1,200 domestically. I elected to write my little Paul Harvey remembrance/salute here in my animation blog because Paul could be very animated in his delivery of a line or a word in his sentences...and his pauses and speech pattern all added to the legend. His speaking voice has often been parodied and imitated here in the Midwest by local comedians.

The career of Paul Harvey goes back to his teenage years...where he'd build radio sets for himself...and this love of radio caused him to seek a career in broadcasting. He got his start on radio, locally, in the 1930's and became affiliated with network radio in the 1940's. His national exposure began in 1951 when he joined the ABC Radio network, a company for which he remained with for the rest of his storied career. From the beginning of his radio talks he often gave his comments about the news of the day and mostly all of these opinions and comments were of a conservative nature...broadcasting for the most part from in and around the Chicago AM radio market his biggest core audience was heavily midwestern...at one point his radio commentaries spawned television commentaries...loosely based on his radio program.

In one of the more unique aspects of Paul Harvey's career is that he rarely granted interviews and when he did appear on television he was pretty much what you might expect to "see" if you could watch him work at the radio studio's...a man in a suit and tie, looking debonair almost, sitting at a desk reading the news into a microphone. His venture into television isn't nearly as memorable as his radio work simply because not many television markets carried Paul's minute and a half commentary feature. I was one of the fortunate ones who lived, and still live, in Southern Ohio and we had the Dayton, Ohio market as part of our television package. Each weekday around 12:20pm on WHIO-TV Paul Harvey would appear sitting or standing delivering a commentary...often with an atlas behind him since his news features spanned the globe.

The You Tube clip above spotlights a 1985 commentary from Paul...who at the time was 67. The clip comes from a local news channel elsewhere in the country, not from Ohio. The pictures above the video is an obituary, of sorts, actually a newspaper tribute/memorial article and along with that is a picture of an issue of Saturday Evening Post from 2003. I have both of those articles in my possession. I bought that magazine when it was "hot off the presses" six years ago specifically because Paul was on the cover. I also, at one time, had a copy of the book "For What It's Worth" from the early 1990's, which was a collection of comedic and strange items straight from the Paul Harvey noon news reports. In his career he delivered an early morning "News and Comment" feature which typically ran close to ten minutes and then during the noon time, "Paul Harvey News" would air, and this was an expanded edition of the morning news cast and ran 15 minutes on most days. This noon report featured more in-detailed news items and commentary. Aside from those two daily radio features you also had "The Rest of the Story", which actually began in the mid 1970's, I believe 1976...this feature was syndicated as well and ran 5 days a week like his news and comment segments.

Unlike his news reports/commentaries, this "Rest of the Story" was purely designed for story-telling/entertainment in which Paul would deliver a story about someone who ends up to be revealed as a famous singer, actor, politician, or some other kind of celebrity. The hook was Paul delivering obscure anecdotes and little known information that was gathered and put together, usually by his son, Paul Harvey Jr., and by stories end he reveals who he's been talking about throughout the story...ending each broadcast with "...and now you know...the REST of the story...".

It would take days to list and research the awards that Paul has won during his 60 plus years in radio news and so I won't. His broadcasts will be missed by the millions who would "stand by" for his program. In a bit of irony, the classic country radio station that I listen to was set to start broadcasting Paul Harvey's news program package starting this coming Monday...and he's passed away before such an event could take place.