TVSquad

Long before ESPN was the worldwide leader in sports, ABC sportscaster and newsman Jim McKay was the voice of American sports. ABC sports legend Jim McKay died today at the age of 86; the cause of death was not revealed. In the annals of television history, Jim McKay is among the giants in sports broadcasting: a twelve-time Emmy winner, an iconic presence on The Wide World of Sports, the man who said the words, "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat." He was the moderator of twelve Olympics and a broadcaster who gave the best he had in every television show in which he was involved, be it the Kentucky Derby, the British Open, or any of the other hundreds of events he covered.

If Jim McKay had just done that, he'd have a great legacy. However, when he was confronted with the task of anchoring the events that unfolded at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when the Israeli athletes were taken hostage by terrorist and killed in a commando raid, Jim McKay rose to the occasion.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Chris Wallace is on the short list for replacements if -- more likely when -- Katie Couric departs the CBS Evening News anchor desk. Wallace, son of the CBS elder statesmen and 60 Minutes attack dog Mike Wallace, has been host of Fox News Sunday since 2003. But the guy isn't interested.

"As much as I grew up in CBS and as much as I associate that anchor chair with Walter Cronkite and the history of broadcasting, I have never been so happy as I have working the last four-plus years at Fox. I suspect I've had a much better last couple of years than Katie Couric."

Walter Cronkite is coming back to television.

Oh, sure, you hear his voice every night in the intro to The CBS Evening News, but his entire body is coming back to TV, on a cable network called Retirement Living TV. It's a year-old network aimed at people who constantly scream at the TV and always misplace "the clicker."

Actually, it sounds like an OK channel for people 55 and older (though isn't 55 a little on the young side?). Shows will include Healthline, Bargain Retirement Places, and Who Wants To Buy A Coffin? Just kidding on the last one. Also signed up on the network are ex-CNN anchor Mary Alice Williams, ex-NBC News anchor/reporter John Palmer, and Florence Henderson, who has hosted several daytime shows, including that Today spinoff a few years back.

OK, so it's been a couple of weeks since Katie Couric took over The CBS Evening News. My first impression was that she's doing pretty well, not reinventing anything but not a failure either. After watching her for a while now, let me make some quick observations:

• Katie asked viewers for their ideas on how she should sign off, but maybe she should have asked them for greetings instead. I mean, "Hi everybody?" What kind of a greeting is that?

It's not often that TV news executives are well-known, but Gordon Manning was one of those people.

Manning was with NBC and CBS news for several years, involved in many of the top news stories of the 20th century, including the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989 for NBC, CBS' Watergate and Nixon's trip to China coverage in 1972, and even set up an interview between NBC's Tom Brokaw and Mikail Gorbachev in 1987, just before his meeting with President Reagan.

Manning was famous for something else we all see now: the color-coded election night map! NBC first did that in 1976.

Manning died Wednesday in Westport, CT of a heart attack.

Two quirky little items about The CBS Evening News.

First, veteran anchor Walter Cronkite has actually taped the intro for when Katie Couric takes over from Bob Schieffer in September. Who knows if the intro will even air, and if it does air if it will be a permanent thing on just a one time thing to welcome Couric.

And speaking of Schieffer, when he leaves the anchor desk, he might become a folk singer! He's written a couple of songs (with another CBS Evening News staffer) that are making their way around Nashville.

[via TV Newser]

Last week, dear brother Joel (really, he's my brother, except I'm prettier) asked you, the beautiful TV Squad readers, if Meredith Vieira could be taken seriously as both the host of both Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Today. Some of you said there was no problem with Vieira's credibility; others said it should be one or the other.

Well, folks, lovely Meredith is not the first person to do double-duty as both a game show host and a news personality. As Joel stated in his post, Joe Garagiola hosted and was a panelist on a number of game shows while on Today. However, he is a recent example. Truth be known, during the early days of television news people regularly double-dipped between one format and another without a complaint.

 

Arthur Bloom, the owner of the stopwatch that has served as the symbol of 60 Minutes for over thirty years and the man who directed the popular news program since it debuted in 1968, died yesterday of cancer at the age of 63. Besides working on 60 Minutes, Bloom also worked with Dan Rather as the newsman prepared to take the reigns of the CBS News after Walter Cronkite stepped down. In addition to being with the program from the very beginning, Bloom also took over the show's live political coverage from 1974 to 1990. Besides the iconic stopwatch, Bloom created the basic aesthetic of the show, including the "magazine cover" images that introduced each segment.

That Walter Cronkite is a feisty old fart, isn't he? It seems like we're hearing more about his opinions now than we ever did when he was the anchor of the CBS Evening News. Case in point: he just told a group of reporters that it's high time the U.S. leaves Iraq. In fact, he says, we could have used the Katrina disaster as the perfect excuse to leave, as we would have needed to divert money and resources to that recovery effort. "I think we could have been able to retire with honor," he told the reporters. "In fact, I think we can retire with honor anyway."

People who were around during the Vietnam era remember that Cronkite gave a 1968 editorial urging the U.S. to pull out of that conflict, which helped turn public opinion against President Johnson's wartime policies. But, then he was the anchor of a news program that was watched by probably 30 million people a night. Now he's just a crank who continues to say he retired too soon. Guess at 89 it's better to still be giving opinions than to be... uh, no longer giving opinions, if you know what I mean.