Cronkite (39 page)

The CBS News mailroom in late November 1963 was awash in letters thanking Cronkite for his public service. A few missives implored him to run for the White House or U.S. Senate. Being a celebrity, which Cronkite undoubtedly was by 1964, meant people thought he could excel at anything. His face now appeared not just on magazine covers, but also on billboards and buses and benches. Executive producer Fred Friendly, who in March 1964 replaced Salant as president of CBS News, hoped to capitalize on Cronkite’s post–JFK assassination fame. He told
Newsweek
, “A man lands on the moon. A president dies. Anything. If you can have
one
man in the world tell it to you, who do you turn on?” After a pause, Friendly then offered a one-word answer: “
Cronkite
.”

NBC News refused to play by the stricture of Friendly’s question, continuing to insist that two, Huntley and Brinkley, were better than one. A cold fact remained. On the escalator ride of nightly news, CBS News was still in second place.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Who’s Afraid of the Nielsen Ratings?

LBJ, STANTON, AND THE FCC—CONNECTING WITH IKE—THE NIELSEN VIEWING BOX—CAN CRONKITE BE A HEAVYWEIGHT?—THE AUBREY FACTOR—CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964—CIVIL RIGHTS REALITY—MURDERS IN MISSISSIPPI—THE INTEGRATIONIST—CHARGING NORMANDY WITH IKE—STICKING BY UNCLE SAM IN THE GULF OF TONKIN—THE DOMINO EFFECT

L
yndon Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, had purchased KTBC (later KLBJ), the CBS radio affiliate in Austin, in 1943 (an often underplayed part of LBJ’s rags-to-riches saga). A quid pro quo system was set up between the Federal Communications Commission—which reviewed all broadcast license transfers—and the rising Texas political wunderkind from the get-go. When Lady Bird purchased KTBC, it was licensed to operate only in the daytime, and it shared bandwidth on 1150 kilocycles with another local station. But then LBJ did a little influence-peddling. Aiming to be a regional giant, KTBC received permission from the FCC to broadcast around the clock and move to 590 on the dial (the uncluttered end), where its broadcasts could be heard in well over thirty counties in Texas. By 1945, the FCC had granted the station the right to double its power, now airing in over sixty counties. At one juncture, LBJ visited Paley and point-blank asked him if KTBC could become a CBS affiliate. The request was quickly approved. One of LBJ’s closest business allies was now Dr. Frank Stanton, president of CBS and Cronkite’s ultimate boss. “Their deep friendship went back a long way,” Johnson aide Harry Middleton explained. “Back to the early Senate days.” Before long, Lyndon and Lady Bird were making millions from their CBS radio and television stations and using Austin as their business headquarters.

Lyndon Johnson’s overwrought disposition always impressed Cronkite, even when it repulsed. Standing six foot two or three inches tall, always well groomed in contemporary ranch clothes or tailor-made dark suits, chain-smoking Camels, a reader of newspapers, regularly flirting with the nearest beauteous girl, Johnson was a Pecos Bill–style folk figure in Texas when Cronkite befriended him. What frustrated Cronkite about Johnson was that for all his loquaciousness, LBJ clammed up when speaking into a microphone. Whenever Cronkite visited Johnson at his 1,500-acre Pedernales River ranch near Austin, they had a fine time talking about CBS business, cattle prices, the effects of drought, and NASA excellence. (LBJ was influential in procuring $60 million for a space center outside Houston.) But when wired with electronics, Johnson—as senator, Senate minority leader, Senate majority leader, vice president, and president—became too self-conscious to spill the beans (the dread of any reporter covering politics).

Full of braggadocio and unparalleled parliamentary skill, Johnson was ill-disposed to most reporters, deeming them mischief-makers determined to sabotage ambitious politicians’ great dreams. Like a hungry hawk circling a desert sink, LBJ was always ready to berate a Big Three network executive over bad press. Nevertheless, radio was his mistress and television part of his daily routine. No sooner did he move into the Oval Office than he had a three-television console installed, with giant rabbit-ear antennae placed on the White House roof. Cronkite assumed that the FCC would force Johnson to sell his Texas broadcast properties, which had made him a fortune. Instead, Cohn and Marks, the president’s law firm, concocted a way for him to put his Texas stations into a trusteeship. Hoping to exert control over CBS, LBJ would routinely call Stanton to grouse about both on-air content and the fees that his CBS stations had to pay for shows’ syndication rights. Whenever LBJ went to New York, Stanton would fete him with limousines, private cocktails, and coffee with the liberal intelligentsia—anything to keep the Texas power broker happy. “LBJ and Frank Stanton were good friends,” Tom Johnson, personal assistant to the president (no relation), recalled. “LBJ would complain about various CBS reporters, including Bob Pierpoint and Dan Rather. Frank spoke as the most respected network head on broadcast in TV matters in D.C.”

What the president knew about Cronkite was that he was a real company man. CBS, which had gone public and ranked on the New York Stock Exchange as far back as 1937, was the “candy store” of Paley and Stanton. LBJ was part of the profit sharing as TV became the most lucrative advertising medium in the world. While that doesn’t mean that Cronkite intentionally went easy on Johnson from 1963 to 1967, the
Evening News
, except for a few tough Vietnam stories, rarely drew blood against the administration. The LBJ-Stanton relationship was so rock-solid that Cronkite, way down on the power totem pole, was careful not to be perceived as a broadcasting antagonist of the White House. Allergic to East Coast condescension, Cronkite knew that LBJ wasn’t “Huckleberry Capone,” as some reporters portrayed him, but was instead a brave champion of minorities and the downtrodden.

Sensing that hailing from Houston bred fraternity, LBJ from 1964 to 1967 treated Cronkite more like a second cousin than a fourth-estate adversary. Perhaps it was an intra-Texas thing—or a political thing inasmuch as Cronkite had an inordinate amount of power as CBS News’ main voice. The fact that Cronkite publicly supported broad-minded Great Society policies aimed at helping the poor, elderly, and minority populations didn’t hurt relations. The Longhorn dropout had also made Houston proud in his
CBS News Special Report
“109 Days to Venus” (about a
Mariner 2
spacecraft’s first planetary flyby). “[Johnson] watched all the newscasts,” Cronkite recalled. “He would call me right after my newscast and say, ‘You got that one wrong. I want you to fix that at your next broadcast.’ ”

Johnson wasn’t the only U.S. political giant who cultivated Cronkite as an obliging ally. In 1964 a story circulated in broadcasting circles concerning Dwight Eisenhower’s unbridled respect for the CBS anchorman. What most impressed Eisenhower about “D-Day Plus 20 Years: Eisenhower Returns to Normandy” was that it had achieved rare “perfect clearance” status by airing on every CBS TV affiliate (even in Alaska, Hawaii, and Guam). Learning that Cronkite had been benched during that year’s Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, the former president telephoned Paley to express his unhappiness. “Walter,” Eisenhower purportedly said to Cronkite, “I called Bill Paley.” Full of instant consternation, Cronkite grew uncomfortable, even queasy as Eisenhower continued his anecdote. “Bill said he didn’t do it,” Eisenhower told him. “According to him, it was some fellow in Chicago named Nielsen.”

The story, perhaps apocryphal, was pervasive around the CBS, NBC, and ABC broadcast centers in the mid-1960s. Newsmen relished it. Not even a former five-star general such as Dwight Eisenhower or an FCC manipulator like Lyndon Johnson could hobble the power of the television ratings system.

Arthur Charles Nielsen Sr., a market analyst, started a television ratings service in 1950. His Chicago-based A. C. Nielsen Company gathered data on television viewing by selecting 1,100 households that represented a demographic sampling of the nation. Each received a free television with a locked box attached. The box recorded the viewing habits of the household—not what the residents might tell a survey-taker about Tube habits, but what they
actually
watched. In the mid-1960s, Nielsen and its competitor, Arbitron, could supply basic raw headcount statistics overnight, but Nielsen delivered more detailed profiles of national television viewing on a weekly, monthly, or biannual basis. Upper-level CBS executives occasionally ignored the ratings, but only at their own peril. Midlevel network executives never strayed from the numbers. Low ratings could ruin a career; conversely, high ones could instantly launch one.

What the Nielsen ratings showed in 1963–1964 was that CBS virtually owned prime time in America. The network also had a lock on daytime television. CBS, the largest advertising-based business in the world, took in twice as much from television operations as NBC, its second-place rival. Paley’s company comprised seven divisions: Television, Radio, Records, News, Television Stations, Laboratories, and International. Television was by far the cash cow of the corporate enterprise. All the top ten daytime shows were on CBS. In the evening’s prime time, CBS broadcast fourteen of the top fifteen shows. In the fall of 1964 CBS premiered
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
;
Gilligan’s Island
; and
The Munsters
—all three mega-hits.

CBS Television president James Aubrey was holding a hot hand, but
The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
—which had begun its half-hour format in September 1963—was not among the winners. Throughout 1964, with Johnson in the White House, CBS continued to lag
The Huntley-Brinkley Report
in the evening news time slot. Cronkite, who was managing editor on the newscast, had closed the gap by a small margin, but that was to no real avail. Demographic data showed that his show was gaining in popularity with television viewers who were older and less affluent than those who watched NBC. That made for weak advertising revenue. Aubrey worried that Cronkite, who would talk to
anyone
and take
any
general assignment, would never beef up to become a Nielsen ratings heavyweight. Something about his sweet aw-shucks demeanor, Aubrey feared, shouted “back-up plan” or “fill-in.” Defending Cronkite against Aubrey was Fred Friendly, who wasn’t afraid to become verbally aggressive with Aubrey in defending CBS News programming.

Just as intimidating as LBJ in person, the six-foot-two Aubrey (known as the Smiling Cobra), who had become a CBS executive vice president on June 1, 1956, was considered abrasive, gladly telling a particular showbiz talent his or her performance reeked, or dictatorially demanding high Nielsen ratings for all his prime-time shows or face the ax. He was full of firing surprises. The threat of cancellation hovered above CBS stage sets like Damocles’ sword. As CBS News anchorman, Cronkite, for the record, insisted that Aubrey never intimidated him and that he never sweated the Nielsen ratings. If that was true, it was equally true that Cronkite didn’t need to study them. The mood in the executive offices reflected with crystal clarity the frustration caused by his middling numbers. One way or another, Cronkite knew exactly where the ratings put his show. “He is the most competitive person I ever met, always driving to win anything, from children’s games to a yacht race to the television ratings contest,” CBS producer Les Midgley noted about Cronkite. “What he wanted, for himself and the show, was to be first and best.”

As a final twist, one that could have serious repercussions for his career, Cronkite was frustrated that his
Evening News
wasn’t winning new viewers, the very reason he’d been given the anchor chair. CBS News division president Dick Salant later reflected on the corporation’s frustration on the record: “Douglas Edwards had been replaced with Walter Cronkite; we had expanded the evening news to a half hour—but so far as the Nielsen ratings were concerned, nothing had happened.” Not that Cronkite didn’t try. Hoping to attract young people to the
CBS Evening News
, he made history and scored a big ratings coup by being the first TV journalist to interview the Beatles when they came to America—the interview was conducted before the Fab Four appeared on CBS’s
Ed Sullivan Show
on February 9, 1964.

The Beatles were a one-night bump, not a salve. The thirty-minute evening TV news broadcast, the use of communications satellites, and the doubling (or tripling) of reporters and budgets were snowballing problems for the Big Three. The networks were all trying to convince themselves—as well as audiences and critics—that television news could make a greater public service contribution, something larger than newspapers, to American society. Something far bigger than radio, too, or even the town crier of bygone days. The Big Three executives couldn’t quite define what that main contribution meant in historical terms. And so, as the critical excitement over the thirty-minute nightly broadcast waned (far more quickly than it had arrived), television news was still a dinnertime convenience that defined its pioneering identity in terms of on-air gimmicks. David Brinkley’s sarcastic wit on NBC, Eric Sevareid’s piercing intellect on CBS, and other high points of news shows on the Tube were actually only parts of a greater entertainment program picture. None of the shrewd people like Stanton or Hewitt or Benjamin who had been drawn to the burgeoning television industry could see the picture in its entirety. Yet executives and reporters alike knew the nightly news was more important than thirty minutes of droning TV in which advertisers bought time. What they didn’t know was that success in the industry had little to do with gimmicks or even technology. Even Cronkite, the veteran wire service reporter, was on the wrong track, trying to measure news broadcasts in terms of newspaper columns. He might as well have been using a yardstick to weigh a rock.

Radio had been in the same predicament in 1940, trying everything from canned laughter to serenades to crystalline wit, but still misunderstanding its own potential. Then Edward R. Murrow bravely stood with a microphone on a rooftop in London during German air raids, his voice one of authority and fire, epitomizing the power of broadcast radio with every syllable uttered. Between the courage in his voice and the screeching London sirens, listeners in the United States felt as if they were
there
, fending off Luftwaffe strikes from their living room sofas. Murrow’s reporting for CBS Radio meant that hardworking autoworkers in Detroit and apple farmers in the Willamette Valley alike viscerally felt Western civilization on the brink of collapse. They were brought directly into the historical moment by the hyper-engaged Murrow.

If television history had ended in 1963 when Cronkite interviewed the Beatles, it also would have left rich accomplishments in comedy (
The Lucy Show
), drama (
Perry Mason
), and, of course, in news documentaries (
See It Now
). All these programs were genuine artistic high points to applaud for the ages. And Aubrey was their master puppeteer. But Paley fired him all the same, tossed him into the street in 1965 like a wino for “unmanageable insubordination.”
Life
magazine published a tribute to the suddenly unemployed Aubrey, treating him as a TV revolutionary. “In the long history of human communications, from tom-tom to Telstar, no one man ever had a lock on such enormous audiences as James Thomas Aubrey, Jr. during his five-year tenure as the head of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s television network,” the
Life
reporters wrote. “He was the World’s No. 1 purveyor of entertainment.”