The Foote Files: The Final Huntley-Brinkley Report On NBC

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Many of you who either know me or read my blog know that I studied classical piano as kid growing up in Dallas, from 1965-1972. As a student of Bomar and Elsa Cramer, I was exposed to all kinds of music and composer: some traditional, some a little more modern. But my favorite classical composer of all was Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827), who wrote so many wonderful musical compositions for orchestra, strings, and piano, including one opera: Fidelio. And one of his musical works was the ending theme for a TV network evening news.

In 1956, NBC dropped news anchor John Cameron Swayze and assigned Chet Huntley and David Brinkley to anchor its early evening network newscast. CBS was actually ahead of them with Douglas Edwards at the helm. From October 26, 1956 until July 31, 1970, Chet and David rebuilt NBC's news ratings, and at one point was bringing more revenue for news than CBS. It was originally 15 minutes but expanded to 30 minutes in 1963. Earlier CBS replaced Edwards with Walter Cronkite who anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 until March 1981.

The show had Huntley reporting from New York and Brinkley from Washington. All told, they did over 3500 shows, both black and white and color. When Huntley retired, NBC renamed the show "NBC Nightly News" with John Chancellor. And that name still exists today.

Chet Huntley passed away 1974. David Brinkley later went to ABC and hosted their Sunday morning public affairs show, "This Week". He passed away in 2003.

The closing theme of the Huntley-Brinkley Report was the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony #9 in D minor, Op. 125. It was Beethoven's last symphony, written between 1824-1826, and the only symphony Beethoven wrote that has a choral portion, in this case in the fourth and final movement. I think you will recognize the theme.

See above for a clip of the final Huntley-Brinkley Report. An excellent run indeed.