Radio prototype: Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly's Hear It Now.

The series prompted CBS to recruit Friendly while Murrow was still in Korea. According to CBS public affairs director Sig Mickelson, executives William Paley and Frank Stanton had grown dissatisfied with dramatized documentaries. Mickelson suggested using more taped actualities and (at J. G. Gude's suggestion, according to Gude) recommended hiring Friendly, to which Stanton agreed (Persico, 1988, pp. 288-289; Sperber, 1986, pp. 352-353). Competition may have played a role in CBS's interest in rejuvenating its documentaries after not airing Murrow's pilot the previous year; apart from The Quick and the Dead, NBC had already begun its series Voices and Events, built around actualities from each week's news (e.g., "Record on Vogeler," 1950). In addition, the Korean War had made news more of an audience draw (Bliss, 1991, p. 233).

CBS's move also extended the Murrow-Friendly partnership that had been so lucrative for the network's record division and that would prove a turning point in Murrow's career. Mickelson and Stanton's key role was ironic given Murrow's antipathy toward both men (Persico, 1988, pp. 288-289). Still, when Murrow and Friendly's new radio series was announced, Variety said it was William Paley who had "conceived" the program and "practically committed [CBS] to an open budget" ("CBS to 'Hear It Now,'" 1950, p. 29). Paley often claimed credit not due him, but he did regularly help shape CBS's programming, and he enjoyed a warm relationship with Murrow in marked contrast to that between Murrow and other CBS executives (Smith, 1990). One account says Paley insisted on allotting a full hour for the new series instead of the half-hour that Murrow and Friendly had proposed (Kendrick, 1969, p. 329). It was scheduled on 173 affiliates as a sustaining or non-sponsored program and given what one critic called "an excellent and highly salable time" on Friday nights "at no little sacrifice" for CBS (Crosby, 1950, p. 21).

Network publicity said the series would employ all of CBS's resources and keep "four recorders going day and night" in a tape room "for exhaustive coverage of the news" ("Never Did So Many," 1950, p. 125). The working title was A Report to the Nation, which had been borrowed from an earlier CBS newsmagazine and which also had served as the title of a special that Murrow and Friendly had produced following the 1950 midterm elections (Bliss, 1991, pp. 280-281; Lichty, 2004, p. 476). By its debut on December 15, 1950, the series had a new name explicitly linking it to the record album that had inspired it: Hear It Now.

Debut and Critical Response

CBS compared Hear It Now to "a weekly news magazine" devoted to "every facet of today's living" ("Never Did So Many," 1950, p. 125). It would have regular contributors: Don Hollenbeck presenting media criticism along the lines of his former program CBS Views the Press, Red Barber covering sports, Abe Burrows reviewing theater, and so forth. The series also was to offer an original musical score each week by an eminent composer. Finally, it would profile a prominent figure in that week's news.

The debut began with an audio montage of newsmakers interlaced with a David Diamond musical theme that later would be reused on See It Now. An announcer stressed that "all the voices and sounds you will hear are real and are presented as they were spoken in the heat and confusion of a world in crisis," with the hope that "the collection of these scraps of sound into a weekly recorded history may add another dimension to our understanding in the difficult days ahead" (Murrow & Friendly, 1950a).

Indeed, Hear It Now premiered at a particularly difficult and crisis-laden moment. A Chinese counteroffensive in Korea was threatening to force U.S. forces off the peninsula. The program featured sounds of the battle combined with Murrow's narration ("That explosion was incoming mail!") and an actuality from a wounded marine: "The Chinese were around us like bees. There was a million of them at least. How I got out ... I'll never know" (Murrow & Friendly, 1950a).

The profile of the week highlighted General Douglas MacArthur, whom Murrow called "one of the most dominant and controversial" figures of his time (Murrow & Friendly, 1950a). CBS had cabled MacArthur and his press chief in an unsuccessful attempt to have the general record a statement for the program (Murrow, 1950). As it developed, the profile of MacArthur relied mostly on archival recordings. Murrow took no clear stand on the general, but did point to MacArthur's promises that his military strategy would produce peace, which obviously was far from being realized.

Alongside news of Korea and domestic reaction to it (including a Montana draft board that was on strike because the atom bomb had not been used), Red Barber reported on the ouster of the baseball commissioner, Abe Burrows critiqued a Broadway revue, Bill Leonard (later to become CBS News president) praised the film Born Yesterday, and Don Hollenbeck tweaked President Truman for his "astonishingly indiscreet" letter blasting newspaper critic Paul Hume after Hume panned Truman's daughter's voice recital. The program also featured Carl Sandburg reciting from The People, Yes. Murrow said the poet was asked to read "because this is a time for great oratory or great wisdom, and we seem to have little oratory to brace us these days" (Murrow & Friendly, 1950a).

Hear It Now's premiere received a 10.5 Nielsen rating, which Murrow seemed to find mildly disappointing but which CBS trumpeted as representing 10,000,000 listeners (Murrow, 1951a; "Some Facts," 1951, p. 620). Billboard praised the show as "alternately stirring, grave, humorous and provocative," and a riposte to "the sad sacks who have been holding their own private wake over the still warm body of radio" (Morse, 1950, p. 8). Others had reservations. The New York Times's Jack Gould (1950, p. 51) charged that the debut had been "abominably organized," adding that "when Hear It Now learns to relax it should be a vastly improved program." For John Crosby (1950, p. 21) of The New York Herald-Tribune, the series was "one of the finest ideas to come up in a long time." However, it needed to be more critical and "take off its gloves and swing."

Sentiments similar to Crosby's came from ex-CBS documentarian Robert Lewis Shayon, now a Saturday Review critic. "It is a good thing to be using actuality tapes," wrote Shayon (1951, p. 30), but they should be coupled with an "honest, creative, responsible, and courageous" editorial viewpoint. Implicit in Shayon's critique was that Hear It Now ought to be more like his own CBS documentary The Eagle's Brood, which had not used actualities but which had vigorously sought to mobilize listeners.

Murrow took such comments mostly in stride, saying it was necessary to "make your mistakes and get some informed criticism" ("Hear It Now," 1950b, p. 44). On the air, he said Hear It Now was "still experimenting" (Murrow & Friendly, 1951a). In a letter to a sympathetic listener, though, he took issue with arguments that the show should be more outspoken: "It may be that at times we do nothing more than contribute to the confusion of our fellow countrymen, but at least we give them their confusion raw" (Murrow, 1951b, p. 640). In that he echoed Friendly, who said they sought to use tape creatively and "let people listen to the raw stuff" ("Hear It Now," 1950a, p. 44).

In fact, Hear It Now in succeeding weeks would grow ever more adventuresome in its sound experiments, while Hollenbeck, Leonard, Burrows, and Barber all would be quietly dropped. Aspirations of presenting an original musical score each week also were abandoned; Diamond's theme would be heard at the start and close as well as during a station break, but all other music in the series would be indigenous to the stories being presented. At the same time, a cautious but distinctive editorial stance would emerge.

Techniques and Themes

Hear It Now's staff included Joe Wershba and Ed Scott (who would both also work on See It Now), John Aaron and Jesse Zousmer (who would coproduce Murrow's TV show Person to Person), and Irving Gitlin (who would become a top documentarian for both CBS and NBC). They worked all week to prepare each Friday program. CBS reporters sent tape to New York via plane or closed circuit. Friendly shaped the various stories into a rough cut while Murrow worked on his narration tying together the elements. The final program was then taped to be played back on the air shortly afterward, with a backup copy ready in case the master tape went haywire (Twitty, 1951).

According to one observer, "Murrow made the principal decisions as to contents and order of precedence" while "Friendly was responsible for the close, meticulous editing of the program"; although Murrow restrained Friendly's more extravagant impulses, there still was plenty of room for irony and invention (Kendrick, 1969, pp. 329-330). That was true of Hear It Now's stories across several categories of coverage.