Back Seat

CBS and its No. 1 newsman, Edward R. Murrow, have long enjoyed a reputation as front runners in their field. Last week, while shining in one form of TV journalism (see below), they took a back seat in reporting the news. When the news was flashed shortly after 10:48 p.m., E.S.T., that the U.S. had launched its first earth satellite, CBS had Murrow himself on camera, chatting with Actor Cyril Ritchard on Person to Person about such weighty questions as "What is the most important thing in the world to you?" Rival NBC, which was luckily televising a discussion of "Missiles and Men" by its own correspondents, broke the big story immediately and ABC cut into a speech by Adlai Stevenson to give its viewers the news in a hurry. But the Murrow show has evidently become so sacrosanct a commercial entertainment that CBS kept the news waiting until he got off the air--some ten minutes later.

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