Don Owen (news anchor) once called him "the Walter Cronkite of the Shreveport media market," a reference to the CBS anchorman from 1962 until 1981. Owen also hired Margaret Pelley of NBC's "Dateline", Roseanne Colletti, who went on to report for WNBC-TV, as well as local figures Wray Post, Tom and Barry Irwin, Carl Pendley, and Tony Taglavore. Owen was a past president of the Louisiana and Mississippi AP Broadcasters and the Louisiana/Mississippi United Press International. In 1963, 1964, and 1965, the Associated Press named him "Broadcaster of the Year". Some of his articles on a variety of topics were published in "Shreveport Magazine."
CBS Evening News officials complained to CBS founder William S. Paley. The second half of the report was aired the following Monday, but only for eight minutes. Cronkite was replaced as anchor of the program the Monday after his retirement, March 9, 1981, by then 49-year-old Dan Rather, who had been with CBS News as a correspondent since the early 1960s and later became a correspondent for the network's newsmagazine "60 Minutes". Concerns about excessive liberalism in the media were frequently leveled at Rather, the "CBS Evening News", CBS News and CBS in general. Some of these concerns dated from Rather's position as