John F. Kennedy became the primary source by which people were kept informed of events surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. In fact, television started to come of age before the assassination. On September 2, 1963, Kennedy helped inaugurate network television's first half-hour nightly evening newscast according to an interview with "CBS Evening News" anchor Walter Cronkite. Newspapers were kept as souvenirs rather than sources of updated information. In this sense his assassination was the first major TV news event of its kind. TV coverage united the nation, interpreting what went on, and creating memories of this space in time. All three major U.S.
Walter Cronkite a game show based on news events. During the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956 Cronkite hosted the CBS news-discussion series "Pick the Winner". Another of his network assignments was "The Morning Show", CBS' short-lived challenge to NBC's "Today" in 1954. His on-air duties included interviewing guests and chatting with a lion puppet named Charlemane about the news. He considered this discourse with a puppet as "one of the highlights" of the show. He added, "A puppet can render opinions on people and things that a human commentator would not feel free to utter. I was and I am proud