The BEST Television History Book I Have Ever Read!

The book is, “The Origins of Television News in America”, by our friend Mike Conway.

In TV news lingo, “unpacking” is what a reporter does when he or she lays out the facts and timeline of their story. Although I have read the book twice, back-to-back, I am still “unpacking” this detail rich book and go back to it almost daily.

The main narrative focuses on the little-known story of how television news started at CBS. That is the center line on this highway, but there is not another TV history highway I have seen that goes more places than Mike Conway’s book!

All the networks, both radio and television, and all the historic events in the prewar, war, and postwar years are covered here in the greatest depth, and with more new information, than I have ever seen anywhere.

CBS legend Bob Schieffer says, “Masterful research and a pleasure to read”. So, say I, and to Mike Conway, I say…thank you for your years of dedicated research, and the huge effort it took to sort and present this information. You have given us new perspective on an amazing array of previously unrealized, domino-like occurrences in broadcast history. -Bobby Ellerbee

Some of my other favorites include “The Box” by Jeff Kisseloff, “The Best Seat In The House” by NBC’s Pat Weaver, “Beating the Odds” by ABC’s Leonard Goldenson, and “This Is CBS”, by Ron Slater.

• • «Did you know Ed Murrow once wished aloud that television had never been invented? That was just one of many things I learned from this fine account of the beginning of TV news. Masterful research and a pleasure to read. » (Bob Schieffer, CBS News chief Washington correspondent and moderator of ‘Face the Nation’)
  • «Mike Conway skillfully reconstructs a lost chapter in the history of television: how a few creative and dedicated CBS employees invented television news in the 1940s. In the process, Conway upends the widely held view that TV news possessed few virtues until Ed Murrow and Fred Friendly launched ‘See It Now’ in 1951. This book is essential reading for historians of journalism and broadcasting. » (James L. Baughman, University of Wisconsin)
  • «This book is a remarkable piece of serious scholarship. Mike Conway has told a fiercely accurate story of the development of the industry. His rich detail and his authentic descriptions of events of long ago come to life for me as vividly as if they happened only yesterday. » (Chester Burger, CBS Television News, 1946-1954)
  • «Anyone who laments the passing of the old guard in TV news will greatly benefit from reading this superbly researched, insightful account of the founding of the field at CBS News, by the most respected emerging scholar in the field of journalism history, Mike Conway. While our landscape is littered with memoirs by CBS news pioneers, this book provides a serious, scholarly examination of the medium’s early era and its influence. It offers the underlying rationale for broadcast innovations and some indispensable perspective on what passes for news today. The author explains what made TV news tick – and how it translates to the modern day. » (Mike Murray, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Editor-in-chief, ‘Encyclopedia of Television News’)

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