Reporters, Television

Origins

Just as radio journalism was slow off the mark, television news was also slow to develop, though for different reasons. Based on radio's experience leading up to and during World War II, broadcasting had a clear and important news role to perform. But television was infinitely more complex—and costly—and the initial focus on developing the visual medium focused on entertainment to build audience and advertiser support. News was present at the beginning on the network level, but played only a minor role in overall time on the air.

Television's initial reporters were most often those who had worked in radio and thus were used to working against short deadlines and thinking and adjusting while on the air. They did have to retrain, in a sense, to accommodate the camera, since now visual images counted at least as much as words. Some early reporters were brand new to broadcasting (most often from newspaper reporting positions), and would thus learn the ropes on a medium that few initially watched. Yet while a radio reporter would often cover a story on his own, no television reporter could “do” a story justice without a camera operator and quite possibly a sound technician as well. Such a team was naturally more expensive—in terms of both salary paid and the equipment needed—than was radio, and cost became a vital aspect of television reporting from the beginning.

Indeed, the earliest network newscasts (NBC began the first regular one in early 1948) were little more than televised newsreels, making use of news photography by others as the networks lacked their own dedicated reporters. Partly because of this very lack of reporting personnel, pictures increasingly defined what was news—dramatic photos or film often dictated what stories got on the air at both local stations and the networks.

Only slowly in the early 1950s did network news divisions begin to consider television reporting a serious and viable journalistic option. As Edward R. Murrow of CBS put it in 1951 when beginning his See It Now weekly documentary series, he was part of an old radio team learning a new trade. By mid-decade, television news growing pains were still the topic of constant debate and worry. Should pictures drive reporter's stories? Could networks allow television reporters to develop their own specialization or “beats” as had long been the case with print?

In 1963, both CBS and ABC expanded their evening newscasts to a half hour (ABC only [Page 1214]followed in 1967), thus doubling their need for on-air reports—and thus reporters to provide them. Nor were evening newscasts the only consumer of reporters' efforts. Network documentaries experienced something of a golden age in the 1960s, demanding the dedication of teams of reporters and technicians to get their stories on the air. The growing Vietnam War provided another training ground for television reporters in a foreign environment.

...