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 President, mentioning that it came from a reliable source. Before the network left KRLD's feed for good, Barker first announced, then retracted, a confirmation of Kennedy's death. CBS cut back to Cronkite reporting that one of the priests had administered last rites to the president. In the next few minutes, several more bulletins reporting that Kennedy had died were given to Cronkite, including one from CBS's own correspondent Dan Rather that had been reported as confirmation of Kennedy's demise by CBS Radio. As these bulletins came into the newsroom, it was becoming clearer that Kennedy had in fact lost his