How the JFK assassination changed TV news and the journalists who covered it 60 years ago
On Nov. 22, 1963, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite battled to hold his emotions in check as he read a wire service report and looked up at the clock in a New York studio and announced that President Kennedy had "died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time."
At NBC News, anchors Chet Huntley and Frank McGee listened as correspondent Robert MacNeil, on a muddy pay phone connection from Dallas, delivered the stunning details describing how Kennedy was gunned down while riding in a motorcade through the city's downtown.
The moments marked the dawn of a new era in media as the three television networks — NBC, CBS and ABC — that owned the audience 60 years ago stayed on the air for four days to provide live, continuous coverage of a national crisis for the first time.
The marathon broadcasts set the template for the decades that followed, as viewers grew accustomed to seeing
