My father watched Walter Cronkite on the CBS News' "Twentieth Century" broadcast back in the 1960s. It was a Sunday show; dad worked too late to watch the CBS Evening News that Cronkite also anchored.

I can't remember my father ever talking about old Walt, who was kind of bland. William O'Reilly, Sr. preferred the more colorful Mike Wallace on "Nightbeat."

Cronkite was a titan for CBS. When he retired 41 years ago, about 28 million Americans tuned in each weekday evening to watch his broadcast. The U.S. population back then was around 200 million.