CBS Morning News

The CBS Morning News is the name historically given to a morning news program on CBS between 5:00 AM and 6:00 AM ET. CBS's current morning news program is called The Early Show, which currently competes with NBC's The Today Show and ABC's Good Morning America. CBS's attempts at counterprogramming in this slot have never experienced the success of "Today" or "GMA".

1970s: "The beauty and the grouch"

In 1973, Paley decided that "the beauty and the grouch" would make an anchor team able to compete with the NBC Today show. The beauty was Sally Quinn, a daughter of a Army general, who had worked for CBS at the 1968 political conventions, and at that time was a feature writer for the Washington Post. The grouch was Hughes Rudd, an old-school journalist who treated Paley like an old drinking buddy when he visited the Moscow CBS bureau on a trip.

Related Topics:
Sally Quinn - Moscow

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CBS launched the anchor pair with huge amounts of publicity. Unfortunately for CBS, within several days of Quinn's debut it became obvious she was totally unprepared for the job. In four months, she was gone.

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The response from CBS was to pair Rudd with Bruce Morton, an experienced Washington D.C. correspondent. Their hallmark was the well-crafted news package delivered in a straightforward manner. Although anchors came and went over the next six years, the two set a consistent tone for the broadcast, which emphasized news and ideas over celebrity gossip or self-help tips.

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