Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 126

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Popular Culture Review

evening sky is lit up for a great distance all around.
(Fang, 29-30)
World War II provided many opportunities for real time
coverage of war events. The reporter who rose to fame with his live
reports was Edward R. Murrow, who worked in tandem with
Kaltenbom during the Munich appeasement crisis of 1938. In March
of that year Murrow and William Shirer arranged for live reports
from five European cities. In New York, Kaltenborn was serving as
what would now be called an anchorman. At that time he was billed
as the chief CBS radio commentator. Using a two-way radio (a
switch has to be flipped one way to transmit, another way to
receive), he would frequently cue reports by saying, "Calling Edward
Murrow, come in, Ed Murrow." (Fang, 309)
From September 12 to September 30 of 1938, Kaltenbom made
85 broadcasts about the Czechoslovakian crisis, along with 14 news
roundups. Murrow made 35 reports and arranged for 116 others from 18
points in Europe. This set the pattern for what is now the typical
newscast with a principal anchorman, usually in New York, and
correspondents giving reports from throughout the world, frequently
on a 24-hour basis during crises. The cost of the radio coverage for the
1938 series of events was $200,000--a very large sum for that time.
Though these were not live broadcasts of war, they were obvious
precursors for the battle coverage which was soon to follow. On
August 24,1940, the Battle of Britain began. Murrow did a live report
from the entrance of an air-raid shelter. The sirens were screaming,
people's footsteps were heard as they walked into the shelter, and
anti-aircraft guns were exploding in the background. Such reports
were to become frequent elements of radio newscasts during World
War II. Murrow's eloquent descriptions, coupled with the sounds of
battle, were to set the standards for real time coverage of war. An
aerial dogfight over the white cliffs of Dover was recorded by the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and broadcast in the United
States despite a continuing restriction placed upon recordings in
network newscasts. There was a fear of staged events. This is ironic,
given the 1990s controversy concerning live coverage, which was
Murrow's primary means of reporting in radio's earliest days of war
coverage.