Eyewitness to History was a CBS Friday night public affairs program which was initially hosted by veteran broadcaster Charles Kuralt ( 1960 -' 61 ), followed by Walter Cronkite ( 1961 -' 62 ), and Charles Collingwood ( 1962 -' 63 ).

He also accepted a commission from the CBS Television network to compose a theme for their newsreel and documentary film series The Twentieth Century ( 1957 – 1966 ), narrated by Walter Cronkite.

* The Twentieth Century ( Walter Cronkite ) ( 1957 – 1970 )

Before IMAX, a previous movie theater there showed films such as NASA's Apollo 8 ( to the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine ) and The 21st Century with Walter Cronkite.

* 1962 – Walter Cronkite takes over as the lead news anchor of the CBS Evening News, during which time he would become " the most trusted man in America ".

* 1962 – Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

* 1981 – After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.

* 1916 – Walter Cronkite, American news broadcaster ( d. 2009 )

* November 4 – Walter Cronkite, American television journalist ( d. 2009 )

This may have started because many prominent broadcast personalities – such as Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Brokaw, John Madden, and Casey Kasem – came from this region and so created this perception.

Three days later, Walter Cronkite opens the evening newscast by confirming that the Smothers Brothers have been replaced by Hee Haw – effective immediately.

Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. ( November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009 ) was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years ( 1962 – 81 ).

Cronkite was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the son of Helen Lena ( née Fritsche, August 1892 – November 1993 ), and Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite ( September 1893 – May 1973 ), a dentist.

* Remembering Walter Cronkite – slideshow by Life Magazine

* Walter Cronkite – Daily Telegraph obituary

* April 16 – Walter Cronkite succeeds Douglas Edwards as anchorman of the CBS Evening News ; he will remain so for the next 19 years.

First came The Morning Show ( 1954 – 1956 ), originally hosted by Walter Cronkite and very similar to The Today Show in fashion ( it, too, ran for two hours from 7-9 a. m.

The Huntley – Brinkley Report was America's most popular television newscast until it was overtaken, at the end of the 1960s, by the CBS Evening News, anchored by Walter Cronkite.

* Walter Cronkite with the News ( 1956 – 1960 )

* Up To The Minute ( Walter Cronkite ) ( 1951 – 1962 )

* Walter Cronkite with the News ( 1961 – 62 )

* You Are There ( Walter Cronkite ) ( 1953 – 57 )

This was so novel a proposition at the time that it got picked up and published by Newsweek and also covered by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

This culminated at the Cronkite's Universe talk show hosted by Walter Cronkite in New York in 1981, where Leakey and Johanson held a fierce debate on live TV show.

Cronkite has also for many years been the recorded voice of the owl at the " Cremation of Care " ritual at Bohemian Grove.

Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D. C ..

Cronkite had been standing at the United Press International wire machine in the CBS newsroom as the bulletin of the President's shooting broke and he clamored to get on the air to break the news.

Cronkite then recapped the events as they had happened: that the President and Governor Connally had been shot and were in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital, and no one knew their condition as yet.

However, the connection was not available at the time and the camera stayed trained on Cronkite in the newsroom.

Since Rather's report, as he had delivered it, only theorized that the President was dead, and no word to that effect had come from any wire service, Cronkite stressed that the report was not an official confirmation of the President's death and continued to report on the incident as if the President was still alive, relaying that Father Huber, who had told reporters on the scene that he had to pull back a sheet covering Kennedy's body to perform the Last Rites on him, didn't believe that the President was dead at the time he entered the room.

Immediately after that, at approximately 2: 38 pm EST, Cronkite was remarking on the increased security presence in Dallas for the President's visit for fear of protests, again bringing up the assault on Adlai Stevenson.

After that, Cronkite reminded the viewers one final time that it had now been confirmed that the President was dead, that Vice President Johnson was now the President and was to be sworn in ( which had occurred just as Cronkite received the bulletin confirming the President's death ), that Governor Connally's condition was still unknown but many reports said that he was still alive, and that there was no report of whether the assassin had been captured ( despite the earlier reports of arrests at the Texas School Book Depository ).

Less than 45 minutes later, at about 3: 30 pm EST, Cronkite returned to the anchor position, this time in his jacket, to replace Collingwood.

After Cronkite left the anchor desk again he was replaced by Collingwood ; Cronkite's next appearance came nearly two hours later, when he took over for Harry Reasoner at the desk so he could anchor The CBS Evening News as scheduled.

Two days later, at 2: 33 pm EST on November 24, Cronkite broke into CBS's coverage of the memorial services in Washington to inform the viewers of the death of Oswald, who had been shot earlier that day ( the news that Reasoner had broken into the funeral coverage to report only seconds after the incident ):

In a 2003 CBS special commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination, Cronkite said that he was standing at the United Press wire machine when the bulletin broke and was clamoring to get on the air as fast as was possible.

The first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic program, was broadcast via the Telstar satellite on July 23, 1962 at 3: 00 pm EDT, and Cronkite was one of the main presenters in this multinational broadcast.

Cronkite was in the New York studio at Rockefeller Plaza as the first pictures to be transmitted and received were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The Walter Cronkite papers are preserved at the curatorial Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

NASA presented Cronkite with a moon rock sample from the early Apollo expeditions spanning 1969 to 1972. ref > Cronkite passed on the Moon rock to Bill Powers, president of the University of Texas at Austin, and it became part of the collection at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

Following Cronkite's editorial report, President Lyndon Johnson is claimed by some to have said, " If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.

President Lyndon Johnson requested a special interview with Cronkite while he was broadcasting live on CBS.

Michael Coats, director of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, presented Cronkite with the Ambassador of Exploration Award.

On November 22, 1963, Sevareid joined Walter Cronkite on television with a commentary about John F. Kennedy's assassination and the road ahead for Lyndon Johnson.