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| Volume 46, Number 2, Fall 1998 |
Anyone wondering about the extent of interest in 77-year-old John Glenn’s return to space, almost four decades after he became the first American to orbit the earth, could get an idea from this week’s television listings. Not only are all the television news outfits, both broadcast and cable, covering Mr. Glenn’s scheduled launching aboard the space shuttle Discovery tomorrow live, but a variety of specials is being served up all week.
Two networks took advantage of the link in many people’s minds between Mr. Glenn’s original flight and Walter Cronkite’s voice. Mr. Cronkite’s broadcast of the 1962 launching and landing ranks among the best remembered events in the legendary CBS anchor’s career. But Mr. Cronkite will not be working for CBS News on Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center. He will be part of the two-man commentary team [with Miles O’Brien] covering the launching for CNN. Mr. Cronkite also narrated the first documentary in a series of three on Monday night on the Discovery Channel.
Last night, A&E’s Biography series presented a new episode, “John Glenn: The All-American Hero,” and CNN showed “The John Glenn Story.” Tonight, PBS offers a one-hour documentary, “John Glenn: American Hero,” written and produced by Blaine Baggett, a filmmaker who was among the candidates to be the first journalist in space before that idea was abandoned in the wake of the Challenger disaster.
An MSNBC commentator for the launching will be Scott Carpenter, one of Mr. Glenn’s “teammates” among the original Mercury astronauts. Fox News Channel, the third all-news cable channel, will have another early astronaut, James A. Lovell Jr. On the day itself, NBC’s Today Show anchors, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, will both be at Cape Canaveral, as will Al Roker, the weatherman. The show’s ABC rival, Good Morning America, has sent Kevin Newman (his co-anchor, Lisa McRee, will stay in New York) and its weatherman, Spencer Christian.
Thalia Assuras, the CBS This Morning news anchor, will be there, but the program’s co-anchors, Mark McEwen and Jane Robelot, will not.
Reprinted from The New York Times, October 28, 1998.