From Murrow to Colbert – CBS Ends an Era

BALTIMORE – On the evening of Nov. 18, 1951, Edward R. Murrow looked into a CBS camera for the first time in the life of the new medium called television, and he helped create standards of excellence that his old network now prepares to crush with the dismissal of Stephen Colbert.

That rumble you just heard was Murrow’s furious ghost spinning in his grave.

On his first night on CBS-TV, Murrow had one monitor placed over his shoulder, on which we saw the Atlantic Ocean. On another monitor, there was the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

And then we heard that husky Murrow voice, already made legendary by his radio reporting from London’s rooftops during the wartime German blitz.

“For the first time,” he said, “man has been able to sit at home and look at two oceans at the same time. We are impressed with the importance of this medium. We shall hope to use it and not to abuse it.”

Did you hear that, CBS executives, as you hasten the decay of network television?

Murrow was the best of radio, and of TV as well, until he died young. But he helped set in motion several generations in which network television became the central gathering place for millions seeking news and entertainment.

And his CBS-TV network became known as the Tiffany Network, because it boasted the most quality programming — and the greatest symbols of broadcast integrity. For news, there was Murrow, and later there was Walter Cronkite who became known as the most trusted man in America.

For entertainment, there was Ed Sullivan and then there was Mary Tyler Moore and Archie Bunker and later there was David Letterman who bequeathed his job to the departing Colbert who will take with him an entire late-night legacy.

And there’s another CBS sign of excellence, which is “Sixty Minutes,” with its half-century of quality broadcasting – but lately, offering more evidence of the end of CBS as the Tiffany Network.

They can’t keep that Tiffany title anymore, not after the most recent capitulation to the bitter, petulant man in the White House, Donald J. Trump.

“Sixty Minutes” did honest reporting on the last presidential race, and this president made them pay for it. He complained of fraudulent editing of an interview with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, an allegation laughed at by every lawyer who took a glance at Trump’s lawsuit and laughed aloud.

Trump wanted $16 million from CBS. While attorneys everywhere scoffed at this, CBS’ parent company, Paramount, was hoping to close a merger with Sundance involving billions of dollars. But they need a go-ahead from the Trump administration.

So they caved on the $16 million. And then, say cynics across the country, the White House wanted its pound of flesh as well – Colbert’s flesh.

CBS gave Colbert the bad news two nights after he mocked the network for caving in on the $16 million.

CBS denies this had anything to do with the firing. They say Colbert’s program has to go because of the new economics of TV. It’s tough to make a buck on late-night talk shows. Fair enough. But however tough the competition, it’s a fact that Colbert’s Tonight Show ratings are the highest among all late-night competitors.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Then there’s the Sixty Minutes connection. With the possibility of Trump blocking the merger, CBS execs have leaned on that perennial powerhouse program to such an extent that the veteran correspondent Scott Pelley criticized the company in public — and the pressure led to the resignation of the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens.

So let’s mark the damage. CBS pays $16 million for a phony lawsuit. They lose the producer of their most prestigious program, Sixty Minutes. And now they’re dumping Colbert and the long-running Tonight Show.

The other night, Colbert announced the bad news. He said, “I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”

He meant the show itself. But he might have been talking about CBS’ once-marvelous history, when it really was the Tiffany Network and proudly upheld the dignity set loose three-quarters of a century ago by Edward R. Murrow.

At such an emotional moment, Colbert might have said a lot more.

But at least he got a few things off his chest — after CBS got him in the back.

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