TVSquad

Apparently, it wasn't The Ed Sullivan Show, as most of us think.

Sure, that was their first major, nationwide U.S. TV appearance where they actually performed, but what show did they first appear on in general? When Walter Cronkite died recently, CBS showed footage of Cronkite's CBS Evening News broadcast from December 1963 -- a rebroadcast of what ran on the CBS Morning Show on November 22; it was going to run on Cronkite's show that night too but you can guess why it didn't -- where they showed footage of an interview that someone did with the group. Sullivan saw the footage and called Cronkite because he wanted them on his show.

But now Brian Williams' NBC Nightly News blog says that the group's first appearance was actually a few days earlier, on November 18, a piece by Edwin Newman on The Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Newsman and producer Don Hewitt has died at the age of 86.

Hewitt is probably best known for creating 60 Minutes and ushering in the genre of the TV news magazine show. He also produced The CBS Television News in the late 40s and later The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. He also directed various TV shows and specials, including See It Now (Grant Heslov played Hewitt in the 2005 movie Good Night, and Good Luck), Presidential Timber, and One Plane, One Bomb, and even produced the first Presidential debate on TV, Nixon vs. Kennedy.

This is from last week but I think it's worth showing today, because when Brian Williams went on The Daily Show they didn't just talk about politics, they got into a sometimes good-natured, sometimes prickly trade of insults (some of Stewart's digs are clearly serious, but Williams can give as good as he gets). They also mention Walter Cronkite and Billy Mays.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Brian Williams
www.thedailyshow.com

[via TV Newser]

Walter Cronkite is a tougher act to follow than letting Metallica open for William Hung.

But now that the news legend and former most trusted man in America has passed on to that big newsroom in the great beyond, America needs someone else to trust. They need someone they can depend on to get the hard, cold facts about the important stories that truly affect their lives. They need someone to cut through the political haze of misdirection and mediocrity that cloud almost every major news story like a lingering beer fart.

That man is ... Jon Stewart. Don't like it? Blame the rest of the news media for not doing a better job.

Right after Walter Cronkite died, CBS decided to stop using his voice over in the intro of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, mainly figuring it was inappropriate to have a ghostly voice introduce their current anchor.

It seemed like a respectful decision, but it felt a bit wrong to me. The voice over was a simple sentence: "This is the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." That's it. It felt like a good way to pay tribute to his immense contributions to television news and to bridge the years between his era and the current one. And, shockingly enough, it wouldn't have felt creepy at all, just comforting.

Cronkite's family must have felt the same way, as they've given CBS permission to keep using his voice at the top of the broadcast. How long CBS will keep doing it is anyone's guess. But if Billy Mays can keep selling Oxi Clean from the Great Beyond, why can't Uncle Walter keep introducing the news?

Walter Cronkite's passing didn't mark the end of an era in the TV news business. The era he helped produce and prolong died long before he did.

It's hard for me to ever imagine a time when people considered a major network news anchor as America's most trusted source for anything. Claims of bias and political persuasion being injected into every story with a meat syringe created a thick fog that made it very hard to cover anything with a modicum of honesty.

Cronkite, however, was the man people turned to when something blew up, exploded, imploded, launched, landed or any other number of descriptive verbs, because his goal wasn't to make news every time he stepped in front of a camera. His goal was just to report it.

• Nickelodeon has a marathon of new SpongeBob SquarePants episodes starting at 7.
• At 7, CBS has That's The Way It Was: Remembering Walter Cronkite, then a new Big Brother.
  
• The CW has a new Valentine at 7.
• At 8, NBC has a new Merlin, followed by the conclusion of Meteor.
• ABC Family has the movie Labor Pains at 8.
• Discovery has a new Deadliest Catch at 8.
• TCM has An American in Paris at 8.
• At 9, PBS has a new Masterpiece Mystery!
• There's a new Law and Order: CI on USA at 9, then a new In Plain Sight.
• HBO has a new True Blood at 9, followed by new episodes of Hung and Entourage.
• ESPN has the ESPY Awards at 9.
• Lifetime has a new Drop Dead Diva at 9, followed by a new Army Wives.
• Food Network has a new Next Food Network Star at 9, then the season premiere of Ace of Cakes.
• A&E has two new episodes of Gene Simmons' Family Jewels at 9, then two new episodes of Hammertime.
• Also at 9: History Channel has a new Ice Road Truckers, followed by the series premiere of Pawn Stars (two episodes).
• At 10, HGTV has the season premiere of Design Star.
• At 12:15am, Cartoon Network has a new Squidbillies.
• At 1am, Cartoon Network has a new Mighty Boosh.

Check your local TV listings for more.

OK, if you were to pick the weekend that Walter Cronkite died, you couldn't have picked a more ironic, odd weekend for it to happen.

Cronkite was a huge fan of the space program, and he was incredibly giddy during CBS news coverage of the first moon landing in 1969. And here we are on the 40th anniversary of that very mission. Reminds me of when Charles Schulz died, hours before the very last Peanuts cartoon ran.

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.