David Brinkley once told me his definition of news. “News,” he said, “is what I say it is.” Brinkley was not being arrogant. He and co-anchor Chet Hundley chose what to report, from all the events in the world during the preceding 24 hours, for their half-hour evening news broadcast, The Hundley-Brinkley Report. They shared the duties of the NBC Television Network evening news program from 1956 to 1970.

Brinkley came to Richmond and WRVA TV (now WWBT) to cross-promote the local and network newscasts. Douglas Edwards, generally recognized as the very first network TV news anchor, broadcast from a CBS studio in New York. In 1956, NBC decided to counter with a unique evening news setup. Hundley broadcast from a studio in New York while Brinkley’s half came from a studio in DC. It was switched live twice an evening with the first feed at 6:30 pm and the West Coast feed at 7. The idea was that since Brinkley was in DC, he was closer to the news there and therefore had more reliable sources. And Huntley being in New York had access to news from everywhere else. I really would have liked to attend some of the two martini lunches where these ideas were hatched.

I was a WRVA TV studio director at the time and ran the board and called the shots when Brinkley and the local anchor recorded their promos. We used 2-inch tape at the time, but that’s a story for another day. After the recording, I was invited to lunch with Brinkley and some of the station’s big wigs.

I was looking for a tag for this story but couldn’t think of one. After lunch, Brinkley moved on to another city and I went back to work to direct and record whatever afternoon commercials traffic had scheduled for me. -dm-