July 30, 1964 - Walter Cronkite anchorman for CBS-TV’s coverage of national political conventions since 1952, will be replaced at the Democratic convention by Robert Trout and Roger Mudd.
The announcement was made today by Fred Friendly, president of CBS News, who said Cronkite would continue as anchorman of “CBS Evening News,” which is televised five times a week. Friendly said Cronkite’s work at the recent Republican convention had been superb but that CBS believed that “the story can be reported better by two men” at the Democratic convention, which begins Aug. 24 in Atlantic City.
CBS is the last of the three national networks to establish a two-member anchor team for conventions. It was begun in 1956 by NBC with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. For the Republican convention this year, ABC used Howard K. Smith and Edward P. Morgan.
Based on surveys by various rating services, NBC had the largest audience for the Republican convention, with CBS running second and ABC third.
In praising Cronkite’s work, Friendly said: “No single news correspondent has been able to equal his news judgment, his knowledgeability, and his all-around ability to report a running story. He will continue to play a major role for CBS News, not only as an anchor man and managing editor of our flagship news program, but as anchorman for our coverage of major stories in the future such as the scheduled Gemini space shots.”
Yesterday, there were rumors of Cronkite’s resignation from CBS, but the network denied them, and a source close to the commentator said Cronkite had no thoughts of resigning now.
Cronkite, who reported during World War II in the Atlantic and European theaters for the United Press, joined CBS in Washington in 1950. The commentator, who is 47 years old, attended the University of Texas while working for the Scripps-Howard News bureau in Austin.
According to the Associated Press, Cronkite, in a telephone conversation from a vacation resort in San Diego, said:
“The story is purely and simply the Madison Avenue ratings game. I’ve never objected to that because it’s the only system we’ve got to measure our audience, imperfect as it may be.
“We took a clobbering in San Francisco, and it seems perfectly reasonable that management at CBS would like to try something else to regain the audience. This is their decision as to what should be done.”
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