The (Not Exactly) First Anchor

Douglas Edwards is credited with being the first anchorman of the CBS-TV evening newscast in 1948. That’s a simplification. Edwards anchored television newscasts before this, and there were other anchors before Edwards, such as Richard Hubbell starting in 1941. However, May 3, 1948 is when the newscasts were expanded to five nights a week and the man picked to work solo behind the desk was Doug Edwards.

CBS had was a three-station network at the time—WCBS-TV, New York, WCAU-TV, Philadelphia, and WMAR-TV, Baltimore, though the Philly station was still in test mode. Affiliation deals had been signed with nine other stations that were under construction.¹

Edwards first anchored the CBS Television News on March 20, 1947² when the network was a whopping one station—in New York City. He replaced Larry LeSueur. The news aired for 15 minutes on Thursdays and Saturdays; Tom O’Connor continued to handle the weekend newscast. The news had been sponsored by Gulf since June 1946 when Milo Boulton was the anchor.³ (O’Connor was a former PM reporter who was hired as a news writer and newscaster on WCBW in July 1945⁴),

The roof soon caved in. CBS needed to save money, so it eliminated all studio TV programming effective May 11, 1947.⁵ But Edwards kept anchoring. He commented off-camera while charts and pictures were broadcast. Gulf must have been happy with this as it continued to sponsor the newscasts which eventually could be seen on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. With a small network in place, CBS re-opened its studio at Grand Central Terminal on April 28, 1948 with Edwards’ newscast as the first live programme from it.⁶

Let’s go back to those days and find out what the print news media was saying about Edwards. Here’s an unbylined story from The Boston Globe of June 6, 1948. The city didn’t have a CBS TV affiliate yet.

Edwards Prepares 10 Hours for 15-Minute TV Broadcast
Reporting News While Electronic Cameras Stare Is Not World’s Easiest Job
Douglas Edwards, native of Oklahoma who spent his boyhood in Alabama and his college days in Georgia, hasn’t seen any of those places in quite a while. But they will be seeing him one of these days—on television receivers.
Better known as a Columbia Broadcasting System correspondent and news analyst, Edwards is piling up an impressive record of pioneering experience in the new medium in addition to his regular broadcasting assignments.
The latter comprise six mornings a week as New York anchor mean for the “CBS World News Roundup” which calls in overseas reporters by shortwave and his five-day-a-week noontime stint as a reporter of the day’s events on “Wendy Warren and the News.”
His broadcast time on CBS-TV is a mere 15 minutes a week, but after a year before the cameras, mostly under Gulf Oil sponsorship, he still needs 10 solid hours of preparation per broadcast.

Reporting the news with a couple of big electronic cameras staring at you in the eye needs that kind of preparation if you’re going to be caught off base, Edwards explains.
“A television news broadcast,” the sandy-haired 31-year-old newsman explains, “is a combination of reporting-up-to-the-minute happenings, analysing the day’s big events, and acting as interlocutor for films, photos and other illustrative material that the audience is busy looking at while listening to you. That means you have to know when to shut up too.”
While he can depend on his typewritten script in his other broadcasts Edwards has to work mostly from memory for the television shows even though he holds a script in his hand from time to time for reference to figures or other tricky bits of information.
He got his first taste of broadcasting while in high school. Some of his friends rigged a 100-watt station and Doug, who had been practicing newscasting into a telephone since he was 12 years old, was naturally appointed news broadcaster.
His first regular radio reporting job came in 1935 at WAGF, Dothan, Ala. He stayed there for three months, then joined the Atlanta Journal and radio station WSB, doubling as radio and newspaper reporter.
In 1938 Edwards transferred to a new job with WXYZ, Detroit, stayed on for a couple of years and in 1940 returned to WSB, Atlanta, to become assistant news director for the station.
In December, 1942, he joined Columbia network’s news staff, worked on such shows as “Report to the Nation,” “The World Today,” Behind the Scenes at CBS.” In March, 1945, he went overseas, was heard from London, Paris and Germany and went on an 8000-mile roving assignment to inspect Army Air Corps Communications installations in Marseille, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Ankara and other cities. He returned to the United States in June, 1946.
Edwards, 5 feet 9, 160 pounds, is married to the former Sara Byrd of North Carolina and has two children, a 7-year-old daughter, Lynn Alice, and a son, Robert Anthony, 2½.

Edwards had some further comments to Jack Perlis of the New York Times on January 2, 1949.

[Edwards] feels that the ever growing video audience “is entitled to as full a news covering on this newer medium as it gets on radio. The news and its interpretation are the important things—news has its own dignity—and it is our job at CBS to present it in an informative and visually effective manner.” He goes on to add that “while our news format is fairly well established, we are constantly on the look-out for innovations that will heighten the visual impact of our news presentation.”
As regards that operation bugaboo—reading from scripts while “on camera”—Douglas is equally explicit. He feels that a script is absolutely essential on news broadcasts, not only for content but for the technical demands of timing and cue-ing. The trick is to consult the script rather than read from it. This is done by becoming familiar with the news, so that only occasional glances at the caption heads and cues are necessary to assure continuity.

Regular appearances before the video cameras by Edwards have resulted in some interesting reactions from some members of his audience whom he meets while they are in pursuit of their livelihoods. Often elevator operators, newsboys, clerks in department stores (especially in the video department) glance at him curiously as though they had seen him somewhere before, and audibly check their hunches. One cab drive, on being told his fare was indeed on CBS-TV, remarked: “You know, mister, you look a whole lot better on screen than on the street!”
Members of his own household are not much more encouraging. Two of his three youngsters—Donna (1 year) and Bobby (3 years) maintain an impartial objectivity—their tastes running to electric trains and “Lucky Pup.” However, his 7-year-old charmer, Lynn, is outspoken. She feels that her daddy should smile more often when “on camera” but conceded he has a good point when he replies that a good deal of the news he talks about is far from a smiling matter.
One final matter: Doug Edwards insists that he had proof positive that the CBS telecamera was actually rendered hors de combat during the fateful performance of Gypsy Rose Lee at the Air Force Show held in Madison Square Garden several months ago. It will be recalled that a good portion of the citizenry waxed skeptical at the coincidence of a fuse blowing just at the critical moment. Well, Doug had the guilty fuse in his possession—it had actually blown out—but he sent it along to Miss Lee to be autographed. It was never returned.

Just before Edwards began broadcasting Monday through Friday, Bob Trout left CBS for NBC. In the early 1930s, Trout had emerged as CBS radio’s number one news/public affairs reporter. But the war came along and Trout dropped further and further down the CBS news pecking order to Edward R. Murrow and his team of war correspondents. The same thing eventually happened to Doug Edwards. The CBS Television News was renamed Douglas Edwards With the News in 1950. For whatever reason, the network decided not to have Edwards anchor the biggest showcase in the TV news business back then—the political conventions. That job was bestowed on Walter Cronkite in 1952, 1956 and again in 1960. In 1962 Cronkite, who had been anchoring a 15-minute network cast on late Sunday nights, hosting CBS Reports, Eyewitness and The Twentieth Century, space flight coverage, and conversing with former president Eisenhower in a short series of specials, was handed the prime-time news job on April 16th.⁷

Anyone that tells you that CBS News was floating in some lofty journalist heights where no one paid attention to ratings is full of it. The idea sounds grand but it wasn’t a fact, though “a CBS spokesman” denied it to the New York Herald Tribune at the time. Edwards was more than capable, but increasing numbers of TV viewers were getting their network news from Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC. Cronkite was brought in by news president Dick Salant to get the numbers up. It took time (and a strike at NBC News combined with incisive coverage of Vietnam) for Cronkite to make CBS number one.

Edwards told the Associated Press in a story published on March 15, 1962 that he asked for his release, saying “I have had a very good substantial offer. But they refused me. I don’t know quite what to do. But one thing I’m not the least bit ashamed of the showing I’ve made on the show against the competition.” Salant’s damage control to the AP was that Edwards would take on an increased schedule of “informational programming.” But clearly, Edwards’ career had peaked. He spent the rest of it at CBS anchoring local late news and brief mid-day network newsbreaks on TV and appearing on radio before retiring in 1988.

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1 Broadcasting magazine, April 12, 1948, pg. 26^↩
2 Newsday, Mar 20, 1947, pg. 31^↩
3 Variety, June 26, 1946, pg. 35^↩
4 Broadcasting magazine, July 23, 1945, pg. 52.^↩
5 The Billboard, May 10, 1947, pgs. 15, 17^↩
6 New York Herald Tribune, April 24, 1948, pg. 19^↩
7 New York Times, March 15, 1962, pg. 71.^↩