Live From Leiderkrantz Hall?
Live From Leiderkrantz Hall?
Yes! That was where Douglas Edwards began hosting network television’s very first, live anchor news show. CBS Studios 53 through 56 were located there at 111 East 58th Street from 1947 through 1964. Amazingly, the news room was 10 blocks away and each night, it was a mad dash via taxi to the studio with scripts in hand.
The photo is of the first set of ‘CBS Television News’ which Douglas Edwards began hosting for CBS on Saturday nights, expanding to two nights a week in 1947. On May 3, 1948, ‘CBS Television News’ became a regular 15-minute nightly newscast. It aired every weeknight at 7:30 PM, and was the first regularly scheduled, network television news program to use an anchor. The week’s news stories were recapped Sunday night with ‘Newsweek in Review’. The name was later shortened to ‘Week in Review’ and the show was moved to Saturday.
In 1950, the name of the nightly news was changed to ‘Douglas Edwards With The News’, and I think then moved from Leiderkrantz to the CBS Grand Central Studios. In 1951, it became the first news program to be broadcast on both coasts, thanks to a new coaxial cable connection, prompting Edwards to use the greeting “Good evening everyone, coast to coast.”
The program competed against NBC’s ‘Camel News Caravan’ that was launched in 1949 with John Cameron Swayze. Edwards attracted more viewers during the mid-1950s, but began losing them when Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were teamed up by NBC on the ‘Huntley-Brinkley Report’. In September 1955, Edwards was moved to 6:45 PM, with some affiliates having the option of carrying a 7:15 PM edition.
On November 30, 1956, the show became the first to use the new technology of videotape to time delay the broadcast for the western U.S.
Walter Cronkite replaced Edwards on April 16, 1962 and the show became ‘The CBS Evening News’. On September 2, 1963, CBS Evening News became network television’s first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, lengthened from its original 15 minutes, and telecast at 6:30 PM. The Huntley-Brinkley Report expanded to 30 minutes on September 9, 1963, exactly a week after CBS did.
I remember Douglas Edwards doing the morning news breaks in the mid 1980s.
And Douglas Edwards anchored a 2:55 mid-afternoon news break – and being the consummate broadcaster, I don’t think he ever ran over time. He was a good and trusted newsman.