The Huntley–Brinkley Report
The Huntley–Brinkley Report (sometimes known as The Texaco Huntley–Brinkley Report for one of its early sponsors) is an American evening news program that aired on NBC from October 29, 1956, to July 31, 1970. It was anchored by Chet Huntley in New York City, and David Brinkley in Washington, D.C. It succeeded the Camel News Caravan, anchored by John Cameron Swayze. 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 with Walter Cronkite did so. It was developed and produced initially by Reuven Frank. 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.[1] He was succeeded as executive producer in 1965 by Robert "Shad" Northshield and by Wallace Westfeldt in 1969.[2][3]
The Huntley–Brinkley Report
Norman A. Cook
Chet Huntley in New York City and David Brinkley in Washington, D.C.
United States
3,590
Wallace Westfeldt
Lester Crystal
David Teitelbaum
Henrik Krogius
Gilbert Millstien
15 minutes (1956–1963)
30 minutes (1963–1970)
October 29, 1956 –
July 31, 1970
Overview[edit]
Background[edit]
By 1956, NBC executives had grown dissatisfied with Swayze 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.[4] 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.[5] Bill McAndrew, NBC's director of news (later NBC News president), had seen a highly rated local news program on NBC affiliate WSAZ-TV in Huntington, West Virginia, with two anchors reporting from different cities.[6] 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, 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."[5]
Huntley handled the bulk of the news most nights, with Brinkley specializing in Washington-area topics such as the White House, U.S. Congress, and the Pentagon. (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, from the 1952 studio recording with Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
Enter Texaco[edit]
Initially, the program lost audience from Swayze's program, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower let it be known that he was displeased by the switch.[7] In the summer of 1957, the program had no advertisers.[7] 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.[7] The program received a big boost when, in June 1958, Texaco began purchasing all of its advertising, an arrangement that continued for three years.[8]
Critical reception[edit]
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 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."[9] 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." [10] 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 took over CBS's competing program (initially named Walter Cronkite with the News in 1962 and renamed the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite in 1963). It received eight Emmy Awards 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.[11] The anchors gained great celebrity, and surveys showed them better known than John Wayne, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, or the Beatles.[2] In 1961, Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle 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."[12] The anchors appeared on the cover of Newsweek 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)" by the satirist Tom Lehrer:
In popular culture[edit]
The program was parodied in one of the most oft-seen segments of the early Jim Henson program Sam and Friends, which had originated from NBC-owned-and-operated WRC-TV in Washington, DC. 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'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..."