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CBS News

In the early days of network radio, news competed for a place in the daily programming schedule with entertainment fare such as The Lux Radio Theatre and Major Bowes's Original Amateur Hour. In 1929, CBS's founding father, William S. Paley, decided there was sufficient public interest to warrant a regular daily news summary—five minutes of a morning program called Something for Everyone. From the humble beginnings of that regular news program, CBS would go on to become a key player in broadcast journalism, home to such luminaries as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. CBS News developed into an integral part of what came to be known as “The Tiffany Network” because of the quality of its broadcasts—and the revenue it generated. This entry examines the news division's history and influence.

Origins

On the evening of September 18, 1927, the United Independent Broadcasters (UIB) and the new Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System presented an American opera titled “The King's Henchmen” on a “network” of 16 radio stations. The broadcast—marred by technical problems caused in part by a huge thunderstorm—failed to excite potential advertisers.

Within two months, the fledgling network was in financial trouble and it struggled for the next year. Then, on September 26, 1928, William S. Paley, a young man working for his father's cigar company in Philadelphia, became president of the network, two days shy of his twenty-seventh birthday. He bought controlling interest with a loan from his father, combined UIB and Columbia into one company, and renamed it the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Paley would lead CBS to great success in radio and television news and entertainment for the next half century.

Paley spent the first decade of his tenure building a radio network that would be competitive with arch-rival David Sarnoff's industry giant, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Paley brought aboard solid managers such as former New York Times editor Ed Klauber, and Ohio State University graduate Dr. Frank Stanton who would rise to become president and one of the most influential executives in broadcasting. Paley nurtured young entertainers such as singers Kate Smith and Bing Crosby and in 1935 hired an enterprising Director of Talks, Edward R. Murrow. Paley was making progress, but NBC remained the network leader.

Radio

From its beginning, radio news consisted mostly of commentators who selected their material from newspapers and wire service reports. The two most prominent commentators on radio in the 1930s were Lowell Thomas of NBC and Boake Carter of CBS. It was Klauber who, as the first head of the CBS news department, developed industry standards for fairness and objectivity, factual reporting, and avoidance of editorializing. Moreover, news divisions were made independent of the advertising offices and had direct access to senior management. His news editor (and head of CBS News from 1933 to 1946) was former United Press reporter Paul White.

As Director of Talks, Edward R. Murrow's principal responsibility was to arrange concerts, speeches, and other interesting programs to air on the network. In 1937, the 29-year-old Murrow was dispatched to Europe for the same purpose. There, he hired former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent William L. Shirer. Together they followed German Chancellor Adolf Hitler's aggressive efforts to build a war machine to conquer Europe. However, their efforts to report on the air about these events were routinely rejected, in large part because some CBS officials in New York were unconvinced American listeners wanted to hear a steady stream of stories that suggested war was coming. Once in 1939—when it was apparent to almost everyone in Europe that war was indeed on the horizon—CBS news manager Paul White demanded that Murrow and Shirer put together a program of cabaret acts as a change of pace. This idea was rejected by both journalists.

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