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 added to the McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2001 that would have required TV broadcast companies to provide free airtime to candidates. Cronkite criticized the present system of campaign finance which allows elections to "be purchased" by special interests, and he noted that all the European democracies "provide their candidates with extensive free airtime." "In fact," Cronkite pointed out, "of all the major nations worldwide that profess to have democracies, only seven – just seven – do not offer free airtime" This put the United States on a list with Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago.