Media Literacy: Hey, kids, Uncle Walter's here

When thinking about Walter Cronkite, it is best to remember that the most important person present at any television newscast is not the anchor, but the viewer. Don Hewitt himself, the famed CBS producer who worked right alongside Cronkite, made the distinction nicely when he brandished a remote control and said it was not a remote control at all, it was a gun, with which viewers killed people on the screen that they didn't like. It doesn't matter how famous the anchor is – Katie-Couric-famous, for example – if enough viewers kill her, she'll be gone.

In 1962, when Cronkite became the CBS News anchor, the remote control metaphor didn't work, because there were no remote controls. Anyone not watching CBS already, had to stand up, go to the set, click the channel selector, and go through a mini-engineering routine with the antenna, the vertical and horizontal holds and the fine-tuner, until the CBS picture came in clear. It speaks in Cronkite's behalf, that viewers were willing to apply such slow deaths to the competition, to make Walter Cronkite the star that he became.

This is only one viewer's opinion, but Cronkite had the best pipes, by far, of any of the 1960s anchors. If I sit quietly and concentrate, I can remember what John Cameron Swayze's voice sounded like. The Huntley and Brinkley voices were distinctive, and recognizable, but Cronkite's was not only recognizable, there was an authority chord in it, like FDR, that made it more than affable. To the ubiquitous question, "What two people would you most like having dinner with," I would answer Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, just to hear those two voices in conversation.

Probably at least one TV executive in the 1950s found cause to wonder if movie stars, with their huge fan bases, should be solicited as "news stars" on this new, explosive, small-screen medium. Ronald Reagan, after all, had been in radio news. But it would have been a short-lived thought. Television news was not competing with the movies, but with the evening newspaper, so news integrity was paramount. Then, as now, with the 30-odd-million remaining viewers of (legitimate) television news, it is news integrity first, fame second, which is why Katie Couric, with all her fame as an entertainer, has had such a hard time gaining traction as the CBS anchor.

It would hardly hurt, however, in 1962, if your untested host of this untested television newscast in fact reminded potential viewers of a "looks just like him" movie star. Cronkite had the perfect not only "looks like him" but "acts like him" match: Melvyn Douglas, a legitimate star (see "Ninotchka"), but ultimately an affable, even avuncular, one (see "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"), and a two-time Oscar winner. Douglas also became a familiar television face in the 1950s, with roles in "Kraft Mystery Theater," "The Alcoa Hour," "Goodyear Television Playhouse," "General Electric Theater," "The United States Steel Hour," and "Playhouse 90."

Cronkite, who could have played the "Blandings" role as effectively as Douglas, took the evening news anchor chair on April 16, 1962. Viewers took to him. In September, 1963, the Evening News expanded from 15 to 30 minutes, and the modern network news show was born. It continued to be shaped very much by Cronkite, who understood the viewer's power, and the reason for it. Viewers literally invite their television news providers into their living rooms. Students learning broadcast news skills today are taught to assume a mental image as they are about to go on the air: assume you are sitting on a couch in the viewer's living room, telling your friend the viewer, who is sitting just across from you, the news. Cronkite created that image. Sitting comfortably on that couch five evenings a week, Walter Cronkite became the most trusted man in America.