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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

Q:

But that was after “See It Now” was done.

Stanton:

After “See It Now” was dissolved, really, because it lost its sponsorship and it was not holding up in terms of its audience and we converted it into a monthly broadcast and then Ed took his sabbatical and I started “CBS Reports”.

“CBS Reports” was on the drawing board for the better part of a year before it actually came on the air. I had a man at that time in the organization in the news area-- Excuse me.

[PHONE INTERRUPTION]

Q:

Okay.

Stanton:

The man in charge of documentaries and special projects in News was a man by the name of Irv [Irving] Gitlin, a very good man. And I had the idea that we would start a weekly hour devoted to different topics, a documentary, but it would be a regular feature and have an umbrella name. It would be “CBS Reports” and then, as a subtitle, what that particular broadcast was to be.

The concept that I had was that we would do it once a month the first year, every other week the second year and then go weekly the third year. Because to put together a news organization to turn out a documentary once a month is a very heavy burden and you can do it all at once, but I didn't think that the product would be worthy of the air time if we did it that way. And I knew it was going to be horrendously wasteful because you would have a lot





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