Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News

by Frank Reuven and Reuven Frank

Out of Thin Air is the story of the news behind the news. Studded with personal anecdotes, this is the inside story of the people and events that shaped the way TV reports the news. Frank gives... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671677586
• ISBN13: 9780671677589
• Release Date: July 1991
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 429 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The Making Of The Mainstream Media

Though people usually mention CBS, Edward R. Murrow, and Uncle Walter when talking about the golden age of television network news from the 1950s to the 1970s, NBC News dominated during much of that time. Much of the credit belongs to Reuven Frank, twice NBC's president of network news. In this 1991 memoir, Frank talks frankly about his time at NBC, trying to create programs of substance and on occasion, succeeding. He paired Chet Huntley with David Brinkley, who in turn anchored the dominant nightly news program of the 1960s and early 1970s. After a time away from the boardroom, Frank became president again in time to revamp "Today" and repudiate the duo concept he developed at NBC Nightly News by making Tom Brokaw the sole talking head. Stilted, cranky, sometimes acidic, Frank's memoir is also fascinating, funny, and perhaps the best means a layman has of understanding the evolution of television news. "Insiders credit adding Huntley to Brinkley with ending the fatuous practices of newsreels as well as stilling the affected resonances of wartime radio, providing news adults could watch without squirming," he writes. Frank's focus is more on that evolution than himself; he starts with an evocative and detailed account of how NBC covered the 1948 party conventions in Philadelphia, selling co-branding rights to Life magazine, which also made many of the coverage decisions. Radio reporters adapted to the new medium with difficulty; one sat on a barber chair and explained to viewers what was going on while having his hair cut. This, two years before Frank himself was hired, was the imperfect dawning of the new news. CBS was the first network to figure out what it was doing, with Murrow leading the charge and chairman William S. Paley providing the support NBC parent RCA balked at. Frank's antipathy for CBS is pronounced and often amusing, as when he notes Walter Cronkite's plan to have an "average man" sit beside him at a convention anchor desk so Cronkite could explain to him what was going on, enlightening the audience by proxy. "Whoever vetoed the idea did Cronkite the greatest favor of his career," Frank writes. Frank doesn't have time for the conventional pieties about Cronkite or other legends; he even sees hollowness in his own achievements. Huntley and Brinkley were best known for an on-air relationship that really wasn't there (their signature "Good night, David. Good night, Chet" was hated by both because, as they complained to Frank, it made them sound like "a couple of sissies.") Frank spends most of his book discussing the 1950s and 1960s, odd given the fact he had a longer career than that. He hung around long enough to "execproduce" (a verb he inveighs against) the 1984 party conventions before calling it a day, and may have done more in his later years then he realized, as his brainchild "NBC News Overnight," a failure in its 1982-84 run, is widely credited for bringing a polish and sophistication to broadcast news today's cabl