The first farewell of Frank Reynolds

This probably won't come as a surprise to you, but it appears that there's a YouTube channel for almost everything. Just the other day, for instance, after listening to a playlist of greatest prison chain gang songs to help me with on-the-job motivation, I stumbled on this channel devoted to news broadcasts dating back to the 1960s, including coverage of such things as breaking news events, conventions, and documentaries. Purely by chance, I discovered the video I'm about to share with you today, one that's too good for today's news.

It's the Friday, December 4, 1970 broadcast of the ABC Evening News—the final appearance of Frank Reynolds as co-anchor with Howard K. Smith; he'd be replaced the following Monday by Harry Reasoner. Reynolds had anchored or co-anchored the evening news since 1968, and had become something of a lightning rod for criticism due to his outspoken commentaries, especially with the Nixon administration. (In the tangled world that was ABC News back then, Barbara Walters took Smith's place as co-anchor in 1976 by Barbara Walters; the ABC Evening News itself disappeared in 1978 as the network adopted the World News Tonight format, with, as main anchor—Frank Reynolds.)

I've queued this up to begin with Reynolds' closing commentary, a farewell to viewers. The video quality is somewhat below par, but the content more than makes up for it.


I always liked Frank Reynolds, even though I disagreed often with his politics. I liked him because he was passionate about the news and the obligation to the viewers to "get it right". He was honest about how he felt; he didn't try to disguise his feelings in order to shade the way he presented the news, and I respected him for that. As the clip above shows, he wasn't afraid to let the viewers, or the network, know what he thought. And he was a terrific anchorman, his dedication to accuracy most apparent in his famous outburst while covering the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981. Sadly, he didn't get the chance for a second farewell; his death from liver failure in July 1983 ended his tenure at World News Tonight. He was a newsman through and through, and I can't think of anything else that would have taken him away from it. TV