Network Television’s First Evening News Anchor…Douglas Edwards

This is thought to be the earliest known photo of Douglas Edwards telecasting the news, shortly after the May 3, 1948 debut of ‘CBS Television News’.

Edwards joined CBS Radio in 1942, eventually becoming anchor for the regular evening newscast ‘The World Today’ as well as ‘World News Today’ on Sunday afternoons. He came to CBS after stints as a newscaster and announcer at WSB in Atlanta, Georgia and WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan.

CBS began broadcasting news shows on Saturday nights, expanding to two nights a week in 1947. These reports were delivered by CBS radio news men, who were not interested in this “television stuff” and loathed having to do it. Edwards had a couple of turns at it, and kind of enjoyed it and let his interest be known.

On May 3, 1948, Douglas Edwards began anchoring ‘CBS Television News’, a regular 15-minute nightly newscast. It aired every weeknight at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and was the first regularly scheduled, network television news program to use an anchor.

On February 16, 1948, NBC had begun airing ‘NBC Television Newsreel’, and later ‘Camel Newsreel Theatre’ as a 10-minute program that featured Pathe’ newsreels. John Cameron Swayze provided voice-over for the series. ‘The Camel News Caravan’ was an expanded version of the ‘Camel Newsreel Theatre’ feature Swayze on-camera.

On CBS, the week’s news stories were recapped on a Sunday night program titled ‘Newsweek in Review’. The name was later shortened to ‘The Week in Review’ and the show was moved to Saturdays. In 1950, the name of the nightly newscast was changed to ‘Douglas Edwards With the News’, and the following year, 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.”

It is not clear whether both Douglas and Swayze did a live second broadcast for the west coast. By 1947, Kinescopes had begun to be used and there are stories that report the show was done live again with added west coast content, and reports that say it was kine delayed, but one thing is clear…November 30, 1956, Edwards’ program became the first to use the new technology of videotape to time delay the broadcast.

The CBS program competed against NBC’s ‘Camel News Caravan’ that was launched in 1949 with John Cameron Swayze. NBC’s news took the lead, but by the mid 50s, CBS and Edwards were in the lead. In September 1955, ‘Douglas Edwards With The News’ was moved to 6:45 p.m. ET.

On October 29, 1956, Swayze was replaced by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC’s ‘Huntley-Brinkley Report’ and this helped CBS ratings as it took a while for Chet and David to gain traction.
By the early ’60, NBC’s news ratings were a good bit higher and a decision was make to make a switch at CBS.

Walter Cronkite became anchor on April 16, 1962. On September 2, 1963, ‘The CBS Evening News’ became network television’s first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, lengthened from its original 15 minutes, and telecast at 6:30 p.m. ET. NBC quickly followed suit and ‘The Huntley-Brinkley Report’ expanded to 30 minutes exactly a week later on September 9, 1963.

‘The CBS Evening News’ was broadcast in color for one evening on August 19, 1965, and made the switch permanently on January 31, 1966.

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