A FEW WORDS ABOUT UNCLE WALTER

I've waited until all the tributes and requiems subsided to write a few words about Walter Cronkite. There are 30 year-olds who have no idea what it was like to watch the CBS Evening News when Walter anchored. They'll never know. Only those who've been around for 45 years or more can attest to the truth echoed since his passing at age 92: Walter Cronkite was fair, mostly accurate, tough, competitive, a world class ad-libber, and completely natural.

What I would like to add are some of the facts that have been shunted aside. Like all people in the business of broadcasting, Walter had to deal with the mercurial nature of his executive superiors. Yes, he was Uncle Walter. Yes, he would eventually be considered the most trusted man in America. But it wasn't like he didn't have to fight naysayers and pettiness from within his company, even at a time when news departments were largely left alone to operate at a loss.

Author Barbara Matusow pulled back the curtain on the history of TV Network news in 1983 with her book The Evening Stars. Her Chapter The Age of Cronkite highlights the fact that CBS executives weren't exactly sold on Walter's ability to anchor outside special events like political conventions. When Cronkite did get the job in April, 1962, at age 46, the Evening News was a 15 minute telecast, and the majority of people in America still claimed to get their information from newspapers. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley's Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC was still considered the nightly model for TV news, and held a considerable ratings lead over CBS.

Cronkite's lobbying was among the factors that convinced CBS to extend the Evening News to a half-hour in September of '63. Huntley-Brinkley followed a bit later, and continued to top the ratings. What has been lost in all the obituaries for Walter Cronkite, is how CBS nearly killed the goose that would eventually lay golden eggs. That would happen during the political season, in 1964.

For reasons even they were at a loss to explain, Huntley and Brinkley's NBC coverage of the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco garnered a 55 ratings share, as compared to CBS's 30. (According to Barbara Matusow, David Brinkley said the accomplishment was acknowledged at a meeting with NBC President Robert Kintner, who "...offered a warm glass of whisky--no ice-- a damp handshake, and a gruff word of thanks.")

What everyone should remember about Walter Cronkite, besides the impact his stature and his character had upon while delivering earthshaking news over the course of 19 years in the anchor chair, is how he weathered CBS' knee-jerk response to that lopsided ratings victory by NBC. The trouncing so annoyed CBS Chairman William Paley, he had Cronkite demoted for the next jewel on the network schedule, the 1964 Democratic National Convention. CBS replaced Walter with the duo of veteran announcer-reporter Robert Trout and Washington reporter Roger Mudd. Marketed as "Mudd-Trout," the team did worse against NBC than Cronkite had. Though he seriously pondered whether to leave CBS after such a slight, he never wavered in public. He remained a company man, and went about his job with the same furious curiosity and perfectionism, because that's how he was wired.

Times changed. Events demanded more than Huntley-Brinkley and NBC could offer. CBS built a deep team beneath Cronkite, a former wire-service reporter in Worl War II, who demanded as much as he gave. By 1967, the tables had turned, and The CBS Evening News overtook all others for the next 17 years.

If that were not enough to persuade you that even a God among newsmen was susceptible to the withering politics of broadcasting's inner sanctums, the Matusow book offers another nugget that points out where Walter's boundaries were. While playing tennis with a friend, the subject of Harry Reasoner came up. Reasoner was a CBS correspondent that bolted for the anchor chair at then-third place ABC. After a few mildly successful years, Harry had earned enough capitol to defend his people when he needed to. When one of Reasoner's producer friends was threatened with firing by ABC, Harry said, "If he goes, I go."

A while later, CBS let one of Cronkite's producers go in much the same way. Asked during the tennis match why he didn't stand up to CBS the way Reasoner had with ABC, Cronkite replied, "Harry's tough, alright. But if I'd interfered they'd have gotten rid of me, too." The most trusted man in America was clear-eyed enough to know how the business worked.

This brings us to his retirement. By all reports, Cronkite, at 65, had the gusto to go on for years. As viewers, as Americans, it's as if we were prohibited from having him behind the anchor desk or abroad; denied his enthusiasm and penchant for dotting the i's and crossing the t's as the world changed before us. This is part of the story everybody got right when Walter died: still the company man, he stepped aside early so that Dan Rather could ascend to the top, lest he be stolen away by ABC. Dan, a dogged reporter, was seen as ratings cat nip. The bottom line guys at CBS couldn't afford to let him get away.

In retrospect, this decision not only robbed us of having Cronkite for several more years, it cost CBS Roger Mudd, who after years as Walter's number one substitute, had expected to get the job. The day the decision was announced, Mudd left his desk at CBS, Washington, not to return until he was retired, and writing his memoir in 2007.

What CBS had in Walter, with his "retirement" was an ill-used giant of news gathering, kept in the shadows lest he block the spotlight on its new anchor. The Eye network also got the peculiar intensity of Rather--frenetic, never comfortable-looking, and with a legion of haters. Though a superlative reporter, who's own truth-seeking would get him "relieved" after a 2004 story about President Bush's curious history with the National Guard, Rather was cast as an ideologue by those to the political right. He never attained the level of trust and comfortability that Cronkite enjoyed. By 1984, The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather had slipped behind ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, never to climb the ratings rung, again.

It would be fun to suppose how Walter would have dealt with the changes in the TV news business as the '80's progressed. New technology made whiz-bang graphics more plentiful, satellite time became cheaper, equipment lighter--he could have done the news from anywhere in the world, as it's done today. Perhaps his authority would have diminished as compnaies merged, lay-offs ensued, as news bureaus around the world closed, and as cable made inroads. We don't know. All I can say is that those of us who are old enough to remember are grateful to have had him on-air during a tumultuous time in history, when calm and a steady hand was needed; when the incendiary voices we have today (on cable and talk radio) might have made matters more explosive and tear the country asunder.

His collegue Bob Scheiffer, who did a year at the anchor desk himself, said it best in his own memoir: "It wasn't the anchor chair that made Cronkite--it was Cronkite who made the anchor chair."

Walter Cronkite. 1916-2009. A giant in his time. Our time. For all-time.