Huntley-Brinkley Report (January 6, 1959) NBC 

Anybody know what the stations did with the remaining 15 minutes? Local news perhaps?

You are so right

@@tomripsin730 Yes, most local stations' newscasts also ran 15 minutes at the time (usually 5 minutes each for local news/sports/weather). Also note at 2:22, local stations had the option to air their own commercials in that slot. As 'The Huntley-Brinkley Report' was the most viewed nightly network newscast at the time, it must have been very profitable for those stations to run local spots in that time.

@@LandondeeL Thanks for the info.

Yeah, in this hyper-competitive world, sadly, news organizations have to both fill up the airtime with more news than there is, and sensationalize it to keep viewers interested.

On the contrary, it has all the marks of something from the Cold War era, with a pro-U.S., anti-Soviet Communist tone. You see it as unbiased because you agree with it.

Tim Russert was one of the very last ones who did it straight.

At the time I thought he was a teenager or in his 20's.

Doesn't it exist anymore?

I was 8 months old. Living in Garden Grove, CA. My dad was a Navy Chief Petty Officer. He enlisted in 1939 and retired with 20 years service later in 1959.

Or according to the date, had a 5 day hangover from New Years Eve 1958/59.

They didn't care, leftist sympathies were on display here that are still clouding what they 'report' on. Noozies were responsible for the 60+ years of brutal repression by Cuban dictators-for-life that still have an iron grip on the island. Don't trust the big-time nooz media, they are more interested in pleasing and impressing their colleagues than clear journalism. I worked in that exclusive world and saw their bias up-close and and glad I don't anymore.

@@PatchworkUSA Agreed! I wasn't alive when this was broadcast on TV but there is so much value in watching the older clips and comparing them to today's. It's disgusting how sensationalized everything has become. Kids should be taught about the Overton Window in grade school.

Badgerrr Lattin what is your point? The takeover was news. It was important.

Then; as now, the Communism was/is important.

Very interesting to watch that segment, with its assumption that dictatorship in Cuba had ended. NBC was liberal not leftist in those days and I think everyone was taken aback when Castro's Communism was revealed over the next year, though if they had not been liberal (and therefore in the category of "useful idiots"), they would have been more suspicious at that point. Today the useful idiots of yesterday are no more, and the tolerant but confused liberals of yesterday have been swallowed and absorbed by the agenda of the far left. There are no more liberals.

The CIA would have overthrown a free democracy in Cuba, just as it did in Guatemala, and Iran, and just as the U.S. did in Haiti in the early 1900s. If Castro abided by democracy as the Guatemalan government did, Cuba would be fascist like Guatemala became after 1954.

Hopefully the democrats will suffer the same fate this November.