KCMO (AM) more than half a century. During much of that time, KCMO was a CBS Radio Network affiliate, carrying its line up of dramas, comedies, news, sports, soap operas, game shows and big band broadcasts during the "Golden Age of Radio." Walter Cronkite was a sports announcer at the station in 1936 with the on air name of "Walter Wilcox". While at KCMO, Cronkite met his wife, Mary Elizabeth Maxwell, and later left to become a reporter for United Press International, before becoming a long-time TV anchor for CBS News. In 1953, television station KCMO-TV (now KCTV) was launched. Meredith Corporation
Walter Cronkite were four Peabody awards for excellence in broadcasting. In 2003, Cronkite was honored by the Vienna Philharmonic with the Franz Schalk Gold Medal, in view of his contributions to the New Year's Concert and the cultural image of Austria. A few years after Cronkite retired, Tom Chauncey, an owner of KTSP-TV, the then-CBS affiliate in Phoenix, contacted Cronkite, an old friend, and asked him if he would be willing to have the journalism school at Arizona State University named after him. Cronkite immediately agreed. The ASU program acquired status and respect from its namesake. Cronkite was not just a namesake,