Television news in the United States a team of Tom Brokaw in New York and Roger Mudd in Washington. Brokaw became sole anchor in 1983. CBS launched "CBS Television News" in May 1948 to compete against the NBC newsreel programs, hosted on camera by Douglas Edwards, it was renamed "Douglas Edwards with the News" in 1950. In 1962, Walter Cronkite landed the anchor seat, which he would hold until 1981, and the program's name was changed to "CBS Evening News". On September 2, 1963, the show expanded from 15 to 30 minutes. In the 1970s, "CBS Evening News" was the dominant newscast on American television, and
Walter Cronkite added to the McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2001 that would have required TV broadcast companies to provide free airtime to candidates. Cronkite criticized the present system of campaign finance which allows elections to "be purchased" by special interests, and he noted that all the European democracies "provide their candidates with extensive free airtime." "In fact," Cronkite pointed out, "of all the major nations worldwide that profess to have democracies, only seven – just seven – do not offer free airtime" This put the United States on a list with Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago.