CBS Morning News for live coverage. The "CBS Morning News" title was originally used as the name of a conventional morning news program that served as a predecessor to the network's current morning program, "CBS This Morning". For most of the 1960s and 1970s, the program aired as a 60-minute hard news broadcast at 7:00 a.m., preceding "Captain Kangaroo" and airing opposite NBC's "Today". Walter Cronkite and sportscaster Jim McKay both anchored the original "CBS Morning News" at one time. When CBS reformatted the early morning broadcast, the "CBS Morning News" became a pre-dawn 30-minute news broadcast. The program first aired in its
Walter Cronkite correspondents, relieving Bill Downs as the head of the Moscow bureau. CBS offered Cronkite $125 ($2,189 in 2018 money) a week along with "commercial fees" amounting to $25 ($438 in 2018) for almost every time Cronkite reported on air. Up to that point, he had been making $57.50 ($1,006 in 2018) per week at UP, but he had reservations about broadcasting. He initially accepted the offer. When he informed his boss Harrison Salisbury, UP countered with a raise of $17.50 ($306 in 2018) per week; Hugh Baillie also offered him an extra $20 ($350 in 2018) per week to stay.