On August 8, Peter Jennings, anchor man of the ABC news network for more than 20 years, died. Along with Jennings, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, who last year left their positions at CBS and NBC, respectively, and the celebrated Walter Cronkite, "The Most Reliable Man in North America," as they said in the seventies before retiring in 1981, they helped shape the news programs where the anchor man merged with the director and also did reporting in the field.
Each of them stood out for their particular profile and participated in unique experiences of television reporting. Cronkite remembers the coverage of the space missions of the sixties (he spent 27 hours on the air during the Apollo 11 mission) and the weight of his positions in relation to the Vietnam War. Brokaw was famous for his ability to rally presidential candidates and moderate heated debates. Dan Rather interrupted the CBS broadcast to announce the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. His departure from CBS was due to mistakes made during President Bush's military background investigation. Jennings was the world reporter. The one with the greatest international orientation. He was in Vietnam, at the Israeli hostage-taking during the Munich Olympics, was a correspondent in Beirut and the first to interview Ayatollah Khomeini on the plane that was leading him triumphantly to Tehran.
Rather, Brokaw and Jennings Cronkite were previous to contribute their ability to make impressive special reports with the second-generation satellite technology that was available from the eighties. The Ku band made it possible to mount portable earth stations for uplinks. With this they gained the credibility that allowed them to stay in their positions during all this time.
In a less personal way than the anchors of traditional networks, CNN was later highlighted by the continuous coverage of the wars in Iraq and the US occupation of Somalia when the Marines landed, CNN broadcasting from the beach. During the occupation of Afghanistan, correspondents used satellite videophones to send their reports. Coverage of wars has been vital in the development of new technologies for television news.
In all these cases, the greats of American television invested in novel technologies to develop their news programs, gain credibility and thus capture larger audiences. The chain model with news anchorage is very typical of the United States and in some countries of our region it was developed more than in others. Some news operations work hard to develop characters with credibility and invest in cutting-edge technologies. The implementation of programming models for news that have the attractiveness, reliability and efficiency required by current conditions of competition, needs both technological solvency and visible figures of the stature of Jennings.
