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 the "predominant news voice in America." Affectionately known as "Uncle Walter," he covered many of the important news events of the era so effectively that his image and voice are closely associated with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the Watergate scandal. "USA Today" wrote that "few TV figures have ever had as much power as Cronkite did at his height." Enjoying the cult of personality surrounding Cronkite in those years, CBS allowed some good-natured fun-poking at its star anchorman in some episodes of the network's