The Vigil on the Screen

NBC's President Robert E. Kintner called his news staff together on election eve, gave them a rock 'em, roll 'em fight talk. "Men, you may think this election is a contest between Kennedy and Nixon." Coach Kintner thundered, "It's not. It's a race between NBC and CBS."

The networks' approach could not have been more clearly stated. From the conventions to the so-called Great Debates, the 1960 campaign had been televised, teleguided, teleprompted and telethoned as no other had been before; now the networks were out to cover the election with facts, and themselves with glory. CBS, specifically, was straining to regain the prestige it lost when NBC won a clear victory at the July conventions. It made a strong comeback. In fierce all-night competition, both top networks did superbly. ABC, with less manpower, moved along adequately, but could not hope to compete with the other two. To most viewers, however, what mattered in the end was that TV in general covered the election in thoroughgoing detail, swiftly and well.

Excitement & Hot Dogs. At home base, NBC packed typists, news analysts and executives into the arena-sized Studio 8-H in Manhattan's RCA Building. It organized seven political experts into a "Victory Desk" that decided the fate of states and the nation a jump ahead of the electorate. "We didn't want to call it a Concession Desk," said an NBC executive. "You know, like a hot-dog concession. But that's what it is: a hot-dog desk."

High above the chaos sat NBC Stars Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, seemingly lashed to a specially designed table that looked like two large boomerangs joined together. A dumb-waiter lifted hot food and hot poop up to them from below. Said Huntley: "We're on the quarterdeck of the mother ship."

The CBS news staff meanwhile had crammed itself into a smaller hold on 26th Street, where there was hardly enough room for its glamorous Spielmeisters to comb their hair. Office boys bustled about dressed up like nightclub waiters. The rest of NBC's first team--including Regional Reporters Sander Vanocur, Frank Mc-Gee, Merrill Mueller and, especially, John Chancellor was equally strong.

Supplementing their human talent, all three networks were picking electronic brains: ABC was back again with Univac; NBC had something called the RCA 501; CBS had turned to the IBM 7090. CBS and ABC got off to an erratic start, on the basis of too-early returns, with their brains predicting a Nixon victory all the way. But by 8:30 p.m. (E.S.T.), NBC's 501 had given the presidency to Kennedy; Univac and IBM 7090 rapidly got on the electronic bandwagon and all three remained in close agreement thereafter though sometimes oscillating wildly; at one point NBC's computer leaped from odds of 333-to-1 for Kennedy down to 6-to-1 for Kennedy, then back to 333-to-1. Eventually the machines seemed an almost human part of the election coverage. Said Brinkley at one point: "Our 501 has just had its 2 o'clock feeding of warm election statistics." But from the start, CBS managed to give its coverage a more exciting tone. Anchor Man Walter Cronkite read even early returns in momentous tones, and for a single, steady, unruffled and well-organized performance, he was unbeaten all night. The familiar CBS supporting crew--Eric Sevareid, Douglas Edwards, Charles Collingwood, et al., were smooth, quick and, in the case of Nancy Hanschman, pretty. Conspicuously missing: CBS Oracle Edward R. Murrow bedded down with pneumonia, possibly complicated by a slight case of disgruntlement over the you-be-Brinkley treatment he received during the conventions.

Men & Machines. In contrast to the fast, excited CBS style, NBC's Huntley and Brinkley continued their trademarked approach of relaxed irony about what Brinkley called the "exquisite agony" of it all. At first that mood seemed less well suited to the running election story than it had been to the long-drawn-out, often dull spectacle of the conventions. But as the evening wore on, the Huntley-Brinkley atmosphere proved a tonic for the small hours. When one of the first Democratic state victories became obvious, Brinkley remarked wryly: "Suburban areas are supposed to go Republican as soon as they can afford power lawn mowers. This obviously is not the case in Connecticut." On the whole, though, the incessant business of reporting figures--a chore at which NBC was consistently if narrowly ahead of CBS--left Brinkley little room for humorous Brinkmanship.

Main Stream & Footnotes. With impressive endurance, both network staffs clung to the story through dawn and into daylight, remaining well made up and coherent, with Cronkite growing ever more debonair as fatigue mounted all about him. CBS finally quit at 7 a.m., continuing spot coverage an hour later, while NBC stuck it out until 7:30. By then, Brinkley grandly and unilaterally announced Kennedy's election ("NBC has just awarded him California"), and Dave Garroway, NBC's regular morning glory, took over.

In a sense, the show had been an anticlimax; during nearly twelve hours of figures, Kennedy was seen not at all and Nixon only briefly. And yet, with its incomparable immediacy, TV not only gave the main stream of the returns as it widened between Democratic hope and Republican discouragement, but caught many of the better footnotes to the 1960 election.

In Hollywood the cameras picked up Republican Cinemactor Cesar Romero, a greying panther stalking among the dejected at Nixon headquarters. In a poignant cliche from Washington, ABC showed rows of empty chairs at Republican National Headquarters. Republican National Committee Chairman Thruston B. Morton made appearances on both NBC and CBS, recklessly and gloriously told the U.S. at midnight that the Republicans really had it in the Western bag.

Anxious to be the first to see Nixon in defeat, NBC switched to Los Angeles' Ambassador, planted Herb Kaplow in the Vice President's path ten minutes too early, and Kaplow stood there ad-libbing about everything from Nixon's preconvention campaign to the January inaugural. When the Nixons finally appeared, both networks closed in on a TV sight not soon to be forgotten--Pat Nixon, her face a portrait of distress almost under control, struggling hopelessly to do the smiling job her husband was accomplishing with ease, showing a trace of terror when the unsolemn crowd interrupted Nixon to shout: "We want Pat."

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