HUNTLEY, Chester Robert ("Chet")

(b. 10 December 1911 in Caldwell, Montana; d. 10 March 1974 in Bozeman, Montana), and David McClure BRINKLEY (b. 10 July 1920 in Wilmington, North Carolina), much-admired broadcast journalists who changed television news in the 1960s.

Huntley was the son of Percy ("Pat") Adams Huntley and Blanche Wadine Tatham, a former schoolteacher; he had three sisters. His father, a failed rancher, returned to being a railroad telegrapher, working much of the time as a replacement, and the young Huntley grew up in a succession of Montana towns. In 1926 the family settled in Whitehall, where he graduated from high school in 1929. Scholarships enabled Huntley to obtain a college education; he first attended Montana State College from 1929 to 1932 and then won a national oratory contest that allowed him to attend the Cornish School of Arts in Seattle (1932–1933). He graduated in 1934 with a B.A. from the University of Washington and married Ingrid Rolin on 23 February 1936. They had two daughters and divorced in 1959. On 7 March 1959 Huntley married the television weathercaster Tipton Stringer.

Huntley's broadcast career began at a small Seattle radio station following his graduation. After a succession of broadcast jobs he became a commentator, news analyst, and reporter for a Los Angeles station affiliated with the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Huntley joined the American Broadcasting Company's Los Angeles operation in 1951, conducting three daily radio shows and one on television. He moved to New York City in 1955 to work for National Broadcasting Company (NBC) Radio, and the next year conducted a television news show.

During his West Coast years, according to the media historian Barbara Matusow, Huntley had gained a reputation as a "fighting liberal," known for "siding with the underdog and embracing the cause of individual liberty." His radio series combating prejudice against Mexican Americans in California won a Peabody Award in 1942, a special citation from Ohio State's Institute for Education by Radio, and an award from New York University. Huntley left CBS after refusing to sign a loyalty oath. (In the early 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy led a wide-ranging investigation into the alleged presence of Communists in the government and society at large, charging countless Americans with "disloyalty" to the United States.) He spoke out against anti-Communist excesses and won a slander suit in 1954 against a woman who had called him a Communist; he was granted damages and a public apology. He received a second Peabody Award in 1954 for his "talent for mature commentary."

Brinkley was the youngest of five children born to William Graham Brinkley, a railroad worker, and Mary MacDonald West. He attended New Hanover High School but dropped out during his senior year to take a full-time job as a reporter for the Wilmington Star-News. From 1940 to 1941 he served in the U.S. Army as a supply sergeant based at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. For the next two years he worked as a reporter for United Press International. NBC hired him as a news writer in 1943 but quickly put him in front of the camera as an announcer. For the next decade he honed his craft at NBC, providing reports for such programs as Camel News Caravan and Comment.

In 1956 NBC teamed Huntley with Brinkley to cover the presidential nominating conventions. The combination made such a favorable impression that NBC assigned them to the nightly network news show. They worked together for fourteen years at a time when television journalism was rapidly replacing the print media. (In 1963 the pollster Elmo Roper found that for the first time a majority of the American people queried said their "chief source of news was television rather than newspapers.") Huntley, the rangy, straightforward Westerner, and Brinkley, the smooth, clever East Coast sophisticate, complemented one another, but their news program was not an overnight success, even though their convention coverage trounced CBS's. (They did better in 1960 and 1964, garnering more than 50 percent of the viewing audience.) Their program did not pull even in the ratings with CBS until 1958, but then, with only brief lapses, they stayed number one until 1967.

In alternating between Huntley in New York City and Brinkley in the nation's capital, the program introduced an innovative, energetic, fast-paced style very different from the "rip and read" newscasters who had preceded the team. They revolutionized television news reporting by writing their own copy. Their sign-off phrases—"Goodnight, Chet"; "Goodnight, David"—became such a cliché that at John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural gala the entertainers Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle sang (to the tune of "Love and Marriage") a parody: "Huntley, Brinkley. Huntley, Brinkley. One is glum. The other twinkly."

Huntley and Brinkley were at the forefront of the transformation of network news. The 1960s was a decade of great and continuing breaking news (for example, the assassination of President Kennedy, the space race, civil rights agitation, the youth culture, and the Vietnam War). In 1963, as it became clear that news could be profitable, the networks expanded their nightly news programs from fifteen minutes to half an hour. The producers of the Huntley-Brinkley program tailored it to showcase their stars, and it has been estimated that the more sober Huntley got at least 60 percent more airtime than the individualistic Brinkley and had a broader audience appeal. (Not every viewer found Brinkley's light touch attractive.) In 1965 a polling company found that the Huntley-Brinkley team was even better known than the rock group the Beatles. Huntley did not personally write as much of his material as Brinkley did, but he did compose his "think pieces." He also spent considerable time preparing his daily radio commentary, Chet Huntley Reporting. Brinkley, on the other hand, devoted some of his energies to David Brinkley's Journal, which NBC aired from 1961 to 1963 and which earned Brinkley a Peabody Award as well as an Emmy.

Huntley spoke out against the attacks on reporters by the Nixon administration during the Vietnam War, defending free speech as a hallmark of a free society. It was later revealed that his name had been placed on the White House enemies list during the early 1970s. Although the team worked together for fourteen years, Huntley and Brinkley were not close. They collaborated in relative harmony but did not socialize; in addition, the two had ideological differences. Huntley did not become disenchanted with the Vietnam War as did Brinkley, and in 1967, when the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists struck the networks, Huntley—unlike Brinkley—crossed their picket lines, arguing that it was "inappropriate" for newsmen to belong to a union of performers. His actions resulted in considerable ill feeling among the team's writers. Huntley later explained his position: "The majority membership of the union … are fine people, but journalists have no business associating with them in a union and otherwise handing so much of their collective destiny to entertainers."

Toward the end of the 1960s critics felt that the team had lost its sparkle. Huntley's last broadcast as part of the team was on 31 July 1970; he continued as a syndicated commentator. Over the next few years he joined a New York City advertising agency, worked as a spokesperson for American Airlines, and headed Big Sky, Inc., a multi-million-dollar Montana resort complex opposed by environmentalists. He died following abdominal surgery for cancer days before the complex opened. He is buried in the Sunset Hills Cemetery in Bozeman.

After Huntley left the show in 1970, NBC renamed it NBC Nightly News and experimented with different hosts before settling on John Chancellor as sole host beginning in 1971. Brinkley returned as coanchor from 1976 to 1979. In 1981 he joined the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), where he enjoyed success with his Sunday morning news program This Week with David Brinkley. He retired from ABC in 1998.

Huntley and Brinkley altered the landscape of television news with their influential program during the 1960s. Their differing personalities and styles, combined with innovative programming techniques, created a landmark in broadcast journalism. Noted McCall's magazine of their partnership: "it was part of a fresh new way of treating the news—lively, personal and impressively literate."

Recordings and other biographical material are in the NBC archives at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Huntley's book The Generous Years: Remembrances of a Frontier Boyhood (1968) is a memoir of his youth. Brinkley's autobiography is Eleven Presidents, Four Wars, Twenty-two Political Conventions, One Moon Landing, Three Assassinations, Two Thousand Weeks of News and Other Stuff on Television, and Eighteen Years of Growing Up in North Carolina (1995). See also McCall's (Oct. 1966), and Barbara Matusow, The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor (1983). Obituaries of Huntley are in the New York Times and Washington Post (both 21 Mar. 1974).

Daniel J. Leab