News program news, and often regularly included "feel-good stories" or humorous reports as the last items on their newscasts, as opposed to news programs transmitted thirty years earlier, such as the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite". From their beginnings until around 1995, evening television news broadcasts continued featuring serious news stories right up to the end of the program, as opposed to later broadcasts with such anchors as Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer. News broadcasts in the United States were initially transmitted over the radio. NBC began broadcasts in November 1926, with CBS entering production on the 25th of
Walter Cronkite announcing his impending resignation, the night before. The January 22, 1973 broadcast of the "CBS Evening News" saw Cronkite break the news of the death of another notable American political figure: former president Lyndon B. Johnson. At approximately 6:38 pm Eastern Time, while a pre-recorded report that the Vietnam peace talks in Paris had been successful was being played for the audience, Cronkite received a telephone call in the studio while off camera. The call was from Tom Johnson, the former press secretary for President Johnson who was at the time serving the former chief executive as station manager at