The Huntley–Brinkley Report
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''The Huntley–Brinkley Report'' (sometimes known as ''The
Texaco Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American Petroleum, oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its Gasoline, fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an Independ ...
Huntley–Brinkley Report'' for one of its early sponsors) is an American television program broadcast by
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
. Anchored by
Chet Huntley Chester Robert Huntley (December 10, 1911 – March 20, 1974) was an American television newscaster, best known for co-anchoring NBC's evening news program, '' The Huntley–Brinkley Report,'' for 14 years beginning in 1956. Early life Hunt ...
in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, and
David Brinkley David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 – June 11, 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997. From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top-rated nightly news program, '' The Huntley–Brinkle ...
in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
It aired from October 29, 1956 to July 31, 1970, replacing ''
Camel News Caravan ''The Camel News Caravan'' or ''Camel Caravan of News'' is an American television program broadcast by NBC. Anchored by John Cameron Swayze, it aired from February 16, 1949, to October 26, 1956, and was replaced by '' The Huntley–Brinkley Repo ...
'' and was replaced by ''
NBC Nightly News ''NBC Nightly News'' (titled as ''NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas'' for its weeknight broadcasts ) is the flagship daily evening News broadcasting#Television, television news program for NBC News, the news division of the NBC television network ...
''. The program ran for 15 minutes at its inception but expanded to 30 minutes on September 9, 1963, exactly a week after the ''
CBS Evening News The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening News broadcasting#Television, television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featu ...
'' with
Walter Cronkite Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the ''CBS Evening News'' from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trust ...
did so. It was developed and produced initially by
Reuven Frank Reuven Frank (December 7, 1920 – February 5, 2006) was an American broadcast news executive. Life and career Born Israel Reuven Frank (he later dropped his first name) to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, he earned a bachelor's degree in so ...
. Frank left the program in 1962 to produce documentaries ( Eliot Frankel replaced him) but returned to the program the following year when it expanded to 30 minutes. He was succeeded as executive producer in 1965 by Robert "Shad" Northshield and by Wallace Westfeldt in 1969.


Overview


Background

By 1956, NBC executives had grown dissatisfied with
John Cameron Swayze John Cameron Swayze (April 4, 1906 – August 15, 1995) was an American anchorman, news commentator, and game show panelist during the 1940s and 1950s. He later became best known as a product spokesman. Early life Born in Wichita, Kansas, Sw ...
in his role anchoring the network's evening news program, which fell behind its main competition, CBS's '' Douglas Edwards with the News'', in 1955. Network executive Ben Park suggested replacing Swayze with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, who had garnered favorable attention anchoring NBC's coverage of the national political conventions that summer. Bill McAndrew, NBC's director of news (later
NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...
president), had seen a highly rated local news program on NBC affiliate
WSAZ-TV WSAZ-TV (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Huntington, West Virginia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It serves the Charleston, West Virginia, Charleston–Huntington media market, market, the second-largest television market ( ...
in
Huntington, West Virginia Huntington is a city in Cabell County, West Virginia, Cabell and Wayne County, West Virginia, Wayne counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The County seat, seat of Cabell County, the city is located at the confluence of the Ohio River, O ...
, with an anchor in Huntington, along with a second anchor in the state capital of Charleston, a format which continues on WSAZ-TV today. He replaced ''Camel News Caravan'' with the ''Huntley-Brinkley Report'', which premiered on October 29, 1956, with Huntley in New York and Brinkley in Washington. Producer
Reuven Frank Reuven Frank (December 7, 1920 – February 5, 2006) was an American broadcast news executive. Life and career Born Israel Reuven Frank (he later dropped his first name) to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, he earned a bachelor's degree in so ...
, who had advocated pairing Huntley and Brinkley for the convention coverage, thought using two anchors on a regular news program "was one of the dumber ideas I had ever heard." Huntley handled the bulk of the news most nights, with Brinkley specializing in Washington-area topics such as the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
,
U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both ...
, and
the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...
. (When one was on vacation the other would typically handle the full broadcast alone, leaving viewers with a familiar anchor instead of a little-known substitute such as a field reporter.) The closing credits music for the broadcast was the second movement (scherzo) of
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus number, Op. 125, is a choral symphony, the final complete symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, composed between 1822 and 1824. It was first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824. The symphony is regarded by many criti ...
, from the 1952 studio recording with
Arturo Toscanini Arturo Toscanini (; ; March 25, 1867January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orche ...
conducting the
NBC Symphony Orchestra The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, the parent corporation of the National Broadcasting Company especially for the conductor Arturo Toscanini. The NBC ...
.


Enter Texaco

Initially, the program lost audience from Swayze's program, and President
Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...
let it be known that he was displeased by the switch. In the summer of 1957, the program had no advertisers. As its content improved, though, it began attracting critical praise and a larger audience, and by 1958, it had pulled even with CBS's program. The program received a big boost when, in June 1958,
Texaco Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American Petroleum, oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its Gasoline, fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an Independ ...
began purchasing all of its advertising, an arrangement that continued for three years.


Critical reception

Critics considered Huntley to possess one of the best broadcast voices ever heard, and Brinkley's dry, often witty, newswriting presented viewers a contrast to the often sober output from CBS News. The program received a
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...
in 1958 for "Outstanding Achievement in News," the awards committee noting that the anchors had "developed a mature and intelligent treatment of the news that has become a welcome and refreshing institution for millions of viewers." The program received the award again two years later in the same category, the committee concluding that Huntley and Brinkley had "dominated the news division of television so completely in the past year that it would be unthinkable to present a Peabody Award in that category to anybody else." By that time, the program had surpassed CBS's evening news program, ''Douglas Edwards with the News'', in ratings and maintained higher viewership levels for much of the 1960s, even after
Walter Cronkite Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the ''CBS Evening News'' from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trust ...
took over CBS's competing program (initially named ''Walter Cronkite with the News'' on April 16, 1962 and renamed the ''
CBS Evening News The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening News broadcasting#Television, television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featu ...
with Walter Cronkite'' on September 2, 1963). It received eight
Emmy Awards The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...
in its 14-year run. Huntley and Brinkley conveyed a strong chemistry, and a survey for NBC later found that viewers liked that the anchors talked to each other. In fact, aside from their sign-off, Huntley and Brinkley's only communication came when one anchor finished a story and handed off to the other by saying the other's name, a signal to an AT&T technician to switch the long-distance transmission lines from New York to Washington or vice versa. The anchors gained great celebrity, and surveys showed them better known than John Wayne, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, or the Beatles. In 1961,
Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...
and
Milton Berle Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger; ; July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over eight decades, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and ...
entertained a crowd in Washington by singing, to the tune of "Love and Marriage," "Huntley, Brinkley/Huntley, Brinkley/One is glum, the other quite twinkly." The anchors appeared on the cover of ''
Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...
'' on March 13, 1961, with a similar tagline, "TV's Huntley and Brinkley: One is Solemn, the Other Twinkly." The impact of ''The Huntley–Brinkley Report'' on popular culture of the 1960s can be illustrated by a verse from the 1965 song "So Long, Mom (A Song for
World War III World War III, also known as the Third World War, is a hypothetical future global conflict subsequent to World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945). It is widely predicted that such a war would involve all of the great powers, ...
)" by the satirist
Tom Lehrer Thomas Andrew Lehrer (; born April 9, 1928) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, who later taught mathematics and musical theater. He recorded pithy and humorous, often Music and politics, political songs that ...
: :''While we're attacking frontally,'' :''Watch Brink-a-ley and Hunt-a-ley'' :''Describing contrapuntally'' :''The cities we have lost...'' Entertainer
Sammy Davis Jr. Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, actor, comedian, dancer, and musician. At age two, Davis began his career in Vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which t ...
was shown in a 1964 photograph watching ''The Huntley–Brinkley Report'' on a television backstage in his dressing room in ''
Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...
'' magazine, who quoted him saying, "My only contact with reality. Whatever I'm doing, I stop to watch these guys."


Ratings

By 1965, the program brought in more advertising revenue than any other on television."Huntley-Brinkley's Chunk of Crinkly," TIME (1965-04-02)
On November 15 of that year, ''The Huntley–Brinkley Report'' became the first weekday network evening news program broadcast in color. The network's weekend programs, Saturday's ''Scherer-MacNeil Report'' and Sunday's ''Frank McGee Report'', were also broadcast in color at that time. The program's ratings slipped late in the decade as
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...
's
Walter Cronkite Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the ''CBS Evening News'' from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trust ...
gained fame for his coverage of the space program, a field in which neither Huntley nor Brinkley had much interest (although Huntley and Brinkley occasionally participated in space coverage, another NBC newsman, Frank McGee, was the prime anchor of NBC's space coverage). Some contemporary observers at NBC felt the program began to slip after a 1967 strike by members of
AFTRA The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) was a performers' union that represented a wide variety of talent, including actors in radio and television, radio and television announcers and newspersons, singers and recording ...
. Brinkley honored the picket lines but Huntley, who viewed himself as "a newsman, not a performer" did not, remaining at the anchor desk. This split puzzled viewers, who had come to admire them for their teamwork. Unbeknownst to most viewers, that relationship was fairly limited—Huntley and Brinkley operated from different cities and rarely met in person, except for live coverage of political conventions, election nights, or a few other events.


Saturday evening broadcasts

For most of its run, ''The Huntley–Brinkley Report'' aired only Monday through Friday, but in January
1969 1969 ( MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1969th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 969th year of the 2nd millennium, the 69th year of the 20th century, and the ...
, the network expanded it to Saturday evenings, with Huntley and Brinkley working solo on alternating weeks, although sometimes, the other would be seen in a taped essay or commentary recorded on Friday. On July 19, 1969, during the
Apollo 11 Apollo 11 was a spaceflight conducted from July 16 to 24, 1969, by the United States and launched by NASA. It marked the first time that humans Moon landing, landed on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin l ...
mission, both co-anchored live (Huntley and Brinkley were commentators during NBC's coverage of the historic Moon landing, again with McGee as anchor). After the Saturday edition failed to garner sufficient ratings to justify two anchors, veteran correspondent Frank McGee took over as anchor, with
Sander Vanocur Sander Vanocur (; born Alexander Vinocur, January 8, 1928 – September 16, 2019) was an American television journalist who focused on U.S. national electoral politics, primarily for NBC News and ABC News. Life and career Vanocur was born i ...
substituting, although the broadcast kept the ''HBR'' name. ''The Frank McGee Report,'' a documentary program not tied to the day's news, aired on Sundays in the time slot. On February 16, 1970, NBC announced that Huntley would retire later that year. Huntley and Brinkley concluded their final newscast together on July 31, 1970. Upon Huntley's retirement, the network renamed the program the ''
NBC Nightly News ''NBC Nightly News'' (titled as ''NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas'' for its weeknight broadcasts ) is the flagship daily evening News broadcasting#Television, television news program for NBC News, the news division of the NBC television network ...
''. Huntley died in 1974. Brinkley worked as co-anchor or commentator on ''Nightly News'' until 1981 when he departed for
ABC News ABC News most commonly refers to: * ABC News (Australia), a national news service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation * ABC News (United States), a news-gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company ABC News may a ...
and its new weekly Sunday morning news program '' This Week''. He died in 2003.


In popular culture

The program was parodied in one of the most oft-seen segments of the early
Jim Henson James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, actor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well known for creating ''Fraggle Rock'' ( ...
program ''
Sam and Friends ''Sam and Friends'' is an American live-action and puppet sketch comedy television series and a lead-in to ''The Tonight Show'' created by puppeteer Jim Henson and his eventual wife Jane Nebel. The show aired live twice daily as a local series ...
'', which had originated from NBC-owned-and-operated
WRC-TV WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., serving as the market's NBC outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A television service, Class A Telemundo outlet W ...
in
Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...
. Using audio from a broadcast of the show, puppet characters Hank and Frank lipsynch dialogue spoken by Huntley and Brinkley in response to original dialogue remarks by Kermit. The segment was sponsored by Esskay Meats in a bit performed by Harry the Hipster and a loudmouthed Professor Madcliffe.
Tom Lehrer Thomas Andrew Lehrer (; born April 9, 1928) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, who later taught mathematics and musical theater. He recorded pithy and humorous, often Music and politics, political songs that ...
's bitterly satirical So Long Mom (a Song for WWIII) mentions the pair: "While we're attacking frontally watch Brinkaly and Huntaly recounting contrapuntally the cities we have lost..."


See also

* Walter Balderson * Robert Conley


Notes

;Inline citations ;Bibliography * * *


External links


YouTube clips


YouTube clip of August 1, 1966 broadcast

YouTube clip of signoff of final ''Huntley Brinkley Report'', July 31, 1970


Other

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huntley Brinkley Report NBC original programming 1956 American television series debuts 1970 American television series endings 1950s American television news shows 1960s American television news shows 1970s American television news shows Black-and-white American television shows Flagship evening news shows NBC News Peabody Award–winning television programs Texaco Television shows filmed in New York City Television shows filmed in Washington, D.C.