(NOTE: Admittedly, I’m biased about this. But at least I didn’t make it No. 1)

The evolution of television news as a window to the world was still in its early stages in 1954.

Both CBS and NBC carried network newscasts that were 15 minutes long, having done so since the late 1940s. The anchor for CBS was Douglas Edwards; for NBC’s “Camel News Caravan,” it was John Cameron Swayze, who puffed away on Camels.

But 1954 was a very important year in TV news.

Just four days after I was born, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy finally responded to Edward R. Murrow’s “See It Now” March 9 broadcast highly critical of his brutal tactics. 

McCarthy, predictably, tried to turn fire on Murrow, alleging he was tied to communists. He also gave a long-winded statement about the evil of communism without once specifically rebutting any of the points Murrow made.

Murrow’s efforts were a factor in the taking down of McCarthy. They showed the power TV news had on determining the national agenda.

Network newscasts expanded to 30 minutes in the early 1960s and created the image of the powerful anchorman: Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, Howard K. Smith and Frank Reynolds on ABC, and, of course, Walter Cronkite on CBS.

TV began to show events live or within minutes of their occurrence. More remarkable than Cronkite’s emotional delivery of the news that President Kennedy was assassinated was actually watching his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, get shot live at a Dallas police station.

But the idea of 24-hour news seemed unworkable. News wasn’t a moneymaker for the networks and it was expensive to produce.

Two things happened to change that.

First, technology made instant news possible. Cameras that were more mobile and communications satellites that allowed almost instantaneous broadcast from anywhere in the world. 

And second was Ted Turner.

The billboard magnate took advantage of the breakthroughs in technology and the fact that Georgia was a non-union state to first create the WTBS SuperStation, a local operation that was broadcast by cable across the nation.

In 1980, he started Cable News Network, the first all-news TV network, in Atlanta. After some initial struggles – he once sold bumper stickers for $5 to help support the network – CNN became a go-to for breaking news. The Challenger explosion in 1986, the upheaval in China Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the start of the Persian Gulf War in 1990 all embellished the network’s reputation.

The first effort to challenge CNN, Satellite News Network, failed in the early 1980s. However,  MSNBC and Fox News, both launched in 1996, cut into CNN’s dominance. Both reflected the nation’s growing political polarization, MSNBC on the left, Fox on the right.

But CNN remains the place people turn when some sudden event breaks anywhere in the world. Wars, natural disasters, political upheaval. The network’s reputation – enhanced by some of the bravest and hardest-working people in the history of journalism – brings people back in moments of crisis.

I worked at CNN for 16 years and, even though I’ve been away for almost a decade, I still call it the home team. It’s an idea that was hard to imagine in 1954, but very much on point with the mission that Murrow exemplified 70 years ago.