Rick Kaplan Pi fraternity at the University of Illinois. Kaplan's broadcast journalism career began at CBS News, where he served as an associate producer of "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" (1974–79) and an associate producer of the "CBS Morning News" (1971–74). He was a writer, assignment desk editor and producer at WBBM-TV, the CBS-owned station in Chicago (1969–71). As an associate producer for "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite", he produced news coverage of the American political campaigns and elections in 1974, 1976 and 1978. He was also a producer of the historic visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel
Walter Cronkite 2006. Cronkite's voiceover was notably not used on introducing the broadcast reporting his funeral – no voiceover was used on this occasion. Cronkite made a cameo appearance on a 1974 episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", in which he met with Lou Grant in his office. Ted Baxter, who at first tried to convince Cronkite that he (Baxter) was as good a newsman as Eric Sevareid, pleaded with Cronkite to hire him for the network news, at least to give sport scores, and gave an example: "The North Stars 3, the Kings Oh!" Cronkite turned to Grant and said,