Rick Kaplan Pi fraternity at the University of Illinois. Kaplan's broadcast journalism career began at CBS News, where he served as an associate producer of "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" (1974–79) and an associate producer of the "CBS Morning News" (1971–74). He was a writer, assignment desk editor and producer at WBBM-TV, the CBS-owned station in Chicago (1969–71). As an associate producer for "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite", he produced news coverage of the American political campaigns and elections in 1974, 1976 and 1978. He was also a producer of the historic visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel
Walter Cronkite Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner, because ABC at the time fed their newscast live at 6:00 pm Eastern instead of 6:30 to get a head start on CBS and NBC for those stations that aired "ABC Evening News" live (although not every affiliate did). On December 10, 1963, Cronkite introduced The Beatles to the United States by airing a four-minute story about the band on "CBS Evening News". This was originally broadcast on November 22, 1963, and was going to be shown again on the "CBS Evening News", but the assassination of John F. Kennedy prevented the broadcast at