CBS Evening News 8/8/1974 - Nixon's impending resignation

[SouthBayDem]

YouTube has the full first edition of CBS Evening News on August 8, 1974, with commercials edited out, recorded from two sources, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive (which apparently didn't have color TV eight years since the networks went color) and an off-air recording in color around the 4:05 mark. Vanderbilt's outline of the program is here.

This was broadcast at 6:30 p.m. (ET), about two and a half hours before Richard Nixon formally announced his resignation as president.

Back then, BOTH parties held Nixon's feet to the fire during the Watergate hearings. So I'm posting this so that we remember how far the standards of American politics have fallen.

I didn't have the experience of living through this moment of American history as I was born in the '90s. (Side note: My favorite Aug. 8 was in 2008 when I watched the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on TV with my Chinese immigrant parents.)

Ulimate70s.com has a page of what would've been on primetime TV if not for Nixon stepping down. According to the Vanderbilt archive (note: the website uses Central Time), CBS News stayed on air after the regular Evening News all the way until 11 p.m. (ET), pausing for the late local news, then returning for a half hour from 11:30 to midnight. So the regular CBS entertainment programming - a rerun of The Waltons and the 1970 film The Looking Glass War (based on a John Le Carré novel) - would be seen only west of the Rockies that night.

[dflprincess]

1. Those happy days when I thought the system worked

I was so young, so naive.

[SouthBayDem]

2. My earliest lived experience around politics was Clinton.

I was in kindergarten during the '96 election and remember my class having a mock "Clinton vs. Dole" poll, probably to teach counting. Bush Sr. was president about the first 2 years of my life, so due to age I have no real "memories" of that time.

Then a few years later was the whole sex scandal - but I never really knew the details until I got more interested in politics as a high schooler; Obama's election was early in my senior year.

So I too thought "the system worked". November 2016 changed all of that, November 2020 got me hopeful again, but then came November 2024.

[Uncle Joe]

3. It's weird, now when I watch Dan Rather speaking in front of the White House, I can visualize *rump on the roof.

Thanks for the thread SouthBayDem

[SouthBayDem]

4. I only knew Dan Rather with shorter hair.

What kind of dress code did TV have back in the '70s where even the news reporters could have hairstyles adjacent to Rob Reiner?

[Uncle Joe]

5. I believe longer hair was a little more in style then,

especially for younger men in journalism, probably bleeding off from the hippies of the 60s.