I clearly remember them, and by the time I started watching, probably around the time of the Kennedy assassination, the broadcast was a half-hour. There weren't anywhere near as many ads in those days, so they had a lot more time to actually talk. They also didn't waste time with celebrity nonsense and fancy graphics (there weren't any in those days). It was just the news, no frills.

to make up for all the hard news they had just reported. Nor did they make their show up of "packages" which featured the reporter telling what we would be seeing, a video, and a follow-up telling us what we just saw.

"Good night, Chet. Good night, David. And good night, for NBC News."

You have to remember that at one time, the news was actually about reporting...the news.

... no editorializing, no "experts" invited to opine on events, no celebrity gossip, no bullshit. Just the actual news.

And it wasn't just H & B. I grew up in NY= (in the 50s), and all NYC stations ran the news from 11:00 to 11:15. It usually broke down to five minutes for international, five minutes for national, and five minutes for local (NYC and tri-state area). Sports was covered simply by announcing the final scores of games played that day at the end of the broadcast.

I remember everyone talking about the news shows that were going to 30-minutes in the early '60s - and people wondering how they could possibly fill a half-hour without being repetitive or adding junk "filler".

And here we are in 2015 - and it's all junk filler.

TV news broadcasting could have been an incredible tool used to inform and educate millions as to what really goes on in the world. What a wasted opportunity it all eventually became.

Keen observations.

Once 24/7/365 news stations became the norm, they hade to create BS "news" ( cough cough ) that had a life of its own; which in turn required more "reporting" ( cough cough ) to create a buzz which made "news" ( cough cough ) in and of itself on "what people are talking about" or somesuch horseshit. Gotta feed the monster.

Then Roger Ailes got to do what he had proposed while he was working for Nixon (a propaganda news outlet). While he was working for the Nixon White House, the notion of an administration-sponsored news channel was floated. I remember my dad exploding when he heard the proposal, and exploding again when Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, a Democrat, called it "an interesting idea" because he was too cautious to find the idea abhorrent enough to immediately condemn it.

Nixon imploded, but Ailes never gave up his idea of a right-wing propaganda station, and in 1996, he finally got his wish.

promote movies, new Apple fad products, and other marketing PR masquerading as "news". And the NRA did not start promoting mass gun violence until after 1977. In fact, H-B ran MORE actual news, including investigative reporting and international developments rarely seen on US TV today.

so, we get about 5 minutes of that. If the actual news was reported and people knew how their lives were impacted by the shenanigans in DC and in their local area, well the masses would be discontent to say the least. So, instead we get bread and circuses.

There is zero film to use in for newscasts, and yet we have 24/7 news networks.

CNN could send some fresh-faced journalism school grad to, say, Zambia, and have him file a long-form piece about, hell, anything there. Literally, any news about Zambia (or some other place we don't hear about) would be better than listening to a bunch of self-important pompous blowhards congratulating themselves on successfully staking out the Beltway Consensus on everything.

They have 24 hours to fill. When was the last time they did a piece longer than 7 minutes?

It was a public service: news delivered on the straight and narrow. The oligarchs wanted a propaganda and profit center. That's what they got.

Broadcasters, even oublic radio and TV, operate to make a profit and always have.

I should have said driven less by profit than now.

What was the net operating profit margin of "The Huntley & Brinkley Report?" Or "See it Now?"

Probably a lot lower than comparable news programs today.

Journalists used to know how to do that...

zines like Time, Newsweek, Saturday Evening Post, Life, etc., that had more pages, smaller print, fewer photos, and more serious stories.

What would happen today if the M$M KNEW a sitting President was an adulterer? The cacophony would be heard 'round the world and would drive the news cycle until whichever President was being targeted resigned.

Contrast this with the fact Philip Graham, Editor of the Washington Post told fellow newspaper editors gathered at a conference he had evidence JFK was having an affair with Mary Pinchot Meyer. Crickets.

Some things were worthy of reporting, and some weren't. Made for a shorter news broadcast, I would say.