CBS Evening News a one-evening test broadcast on August 19, 1965, before permanently switching to the format on January 31, 1966. Cronkite's prime time special report, "Who, What, When, Where, Why", broadcast on February 27, 1968, ended with his declaration that the United States could only hope for a stalemate in Vietnam. It is often credited with influencing Lyndon Johnson's decision to drop out of the race for President. "If I've lost Walter Cronkite ... [I]'ve lost Middle America", he stated. Under Cronkite, the newscast began what would eventually become an 18-year period of dominating the ratings among the network evening news programs.
Walter Cronkite relay what Johnson had said to him. During the final ten minutes of that broadcast, Cronkite reported on the death, giving a retrospective on the life of the nation's 36th president, and announced that CBS would air a special on Johnson later that evening. This story was re-told on a 2007 CBS-TV special honoring Cronkite's 90th birthday. NBC-TV's Garrick Utley, anchoring "NBC Nightly News" that evening, also interrupted his newscast in order to break the story, doing so about three minutes after Cronkite on CBS. The news was not reported on that night's "ABC Evening News", which was anchored by