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Chet Huntley was born on December 10, 1911 and was considered as one of the most talented journalism before his demise on March 20 1974. His educational background is an impressive since he had started off at the Cornish College of Arts in Seattle and later on graduated from the University of Washington in 1934. Upon graduation, he acquired a diploma in speech and drama. By the time of his death, he was working at the NBC as a co-anchor for the NBC evening news in the Huntley-Brinkley report and had been holding this post for fourteen years since 1956.
His career in broadcast journalism started off at radio at the KIRO AM in Seattle's and later on he also worked at Spokane and Portland radio stations. From there he progressed to work for KFI in Los Angeles and this marked the beginning of his advancement since from here he went on to CBS radio then later to ABC radio. It was much later on, in 1955 that he joined the NBC radio network and was often referred to as duplicate of Ed Murrow by those who worked for the network.
In 1956, there was need for NBC TV network to out do their rivalry CBS since the then news anchor, Walter Cronkite had gained a lot of popularity. There were disagreements on who should take over from John Cameron Swayze since he was the host then. During this time, the top choices were Huntley and David Brinkley and since an agreement could not be reached, they were declared co-hosts and that is when the Huntley-Brinkley show was born.
Since the inception, these two displayed a high level of chemistry and for this reason, by 1952, the ratings for NBC had risen considerably. This led the directors of NBC to remove Swayze from the night news program and he was replaced by these two and the show was called. Huntley from New York City, Brinkley from Washington, DC. Since they needed someone that would be unique to NBC, a closing phrase "Good night, Chet-Good night David...and good night for NBC was coined and these two hated it from the beginning. However, later on, it brought a lot of popularity for the show.
It is ideal to note that Huntley wrote a memoir about his childhood years and named it," The Generous Years". Some of the things that he will be remembered for include, his Dick Cavett interview which was in the form of a DVD called, the Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons, Disc 2.
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