Radio Curmudgeons

Radio was initially broadcast over a giant wooden cabinet with an equally large round speaker. Smaller models were soon available but it was the transistor that made these "devices" truly mobile. Radio was where everyone got all the audible news of the world, along with their favorite dramas and comedy shows. The "offline" version was the newspaper. 

Every radio network had a vast number of announcers and correspondents. The ABC network is profiled in the above advertisement from 1950. You are likely dead if you tuned in to these newscasters as an adult. Today, perhaps only three stand out because of their more widespread notoriety, namely Drew Pearson, famous for his Washington D.C. "Merry-go-Round" political column, Louella Parsons with her pulse on Hollywood gossip, and Walter Winchell, famous as a narrator away from his news desk, most notably for the ABC police drama, The Untouchables, nine years later.

Broadcast Pioneers

Roger Mudd (1928-2021) was an American broadcast journalist who was a correspondent and anchor for CBS News and NBC News. He was the recipient of the Peabody Award for his interview with Sen. Ted Kennedy, the Joan Shorenstein Award for Distinguished Washington Reporting, and five Emmy Awards. His smooth, comforting delivery added credence to his long-standing career of accurate and unbiased reporting. 

"Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of." ~Mudd

The Washington, D.C. native graduated from Wilson High School in 1945, later earning a Bachelor of Arts in History from Washington and Lee University. Mudd began his journalism career in Richmond, Virginia, as a reporter for The Richmond News Leader and for radio station WRNL. In the late 1950s, Mudd moved back to Washington, D.C., to become a reporter with WTOP News, the news division of the radio and television stations owned by Washington Post-Newsweek. Mudd quickly came to the attention of CBS News and joined the Washington bureau in 1961. For most of his career at CBS, Mudd was a Congressional correspondent. He also was the anchor of the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News and frequently substituted on the weekday and weeknight broadcasts when regular anchormen Douglas Edwards and Walter Cronkite were absent.

"The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour, raw and confrontational." ~Mudd

After losing the CBS sole anchor position to Dan Rather, Mudd went to NBC in 1980. He was co-anchor for the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw until Brokaw became the sole anchor. Beginning in 1987 Mudd was an essayist and political correspondent with the MacNeil–Lehrer Newshour and a primary anchor for over ten years with The History Channel. Though Mudd retired from full-time broadcasting in 2004, he remained involved with documentaries for The History Channel.

Broadcast Pioneers

Frank McGee (1921-1974) was an American television journalist, best known for his work with NBC News beginning in the late 1950s. McGee had a great talent for descriptive language, often giving viewers a vivid word picture of the day's events. 

McGee began his broadcast career with Shawnee radio station KGFF, working as an advertising salesman, commercial copywriter, music librarian, disc jockey, and news editor. He joined WKY-TV in Oklahoma City in 1950 and is remembered by a generation of Oklahomans as Mack Rogers, the name he used as the local newsman. McGee moved to Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 to head the WSFA-TV news operations. This led to a post on NBC’s Washington, D.C. news staff in 1957. NBC transferred McGee to New York where he was an anchor on major assignments and such NBC programs as World Wide 60, Today, and the Nightly News show. In 1960, he moderated the second debate between presidential candidates John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C. 

During the middle to late 1960s, The Frank McGee Report was a well-known program broadcast early Saturday and Sunday evenings. It was set up to be a traditional newscast and it would include topics and McGee's commentary. After Chet Huntley's retirement in 1970 ended the Huntley-Brinkley Report, McGee became one of three anchors on the newly renamed NBC Nightly News, along with John Chancellor and David Brinkley. McGee moved to The Today Show in 1971, replacing Hugh Downs. He attempted to transition Today into a more serious news presentation, not an entertainment show. McGee was once acclaimed for his "exemplary leadership in his profession in dealing candidly and constructively with the cutting edge of change and controversy."