The maxim reads, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Advice which generally means don’t try to fix something that works. The odds are you’ll mess it up. In the context of the CBS blockbuster newsmagazine Sixty Minutes, it seems to apply. Unless of course, fixing something broken is not the goal of the new owners of CBS.
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There are two funerals on tap this week at CBS, Inc., the company where I spent the first decade of my professional career. When I joined it in 1974, it had recently changed its name from the Columbia Broadcasting System to better reflect its position as a major media company, not just a broadcaster. Its four core lines of business were Broadcasting (TV and radio), Records (music), Publishing (books and magazines), and Musical Instruments/Toys.
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I remember how proud I was the day I reported to work at WBBM-TV, the CBS owned and operated station in Chicago. It was in October 1974. I was to start my first “real,” that is, “post school,” job. My position was “Assistant Political Analyst.” That was a fancy title for an entry level job more commonly known in newsrooms as a “legman.” Legmen, and legwomen, assist senior reporters and columnists as needed. One of the station’s anchors also had the title of “Political Analyst” and I was to help him in everything from researching and producing his stories to doing his expense account and picking up his laundry.
But here I was at bottom of the ladder at the company where Walter Cronkite presided over the evening newscast. The same newscast I had been watching for most of my life. Yes, I felt proud.
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I heard him long before I met him. I remember sitting in the cafeteria CBS had set up in the basement of New York’s Madison Square Garden to feed the hundreds of staff members it had brought to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Believe it or not, in those days the political conventions meant something and, in part because of legal requirements, they were extensively covered by broadcasters.
Just two years out of journalism school, I had been sent by my employer, WBBM-TV, the CBS owned station in my hometown Chicago, to manage our coverage. Along with me was a terrific video crew and a wonderful reporter who needed no supervision and little assistance, and an anchorman who definitely needed both. Those are stories for another day. Today, I just want to talk about the voice.
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