{"id":203193,"date":"2021-12-27T10:00:49","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/roger-mudd-the-golden-age-tv-news-star-who-watched-the-networks-fade"},"modified":"2021-12-27T10:00:49","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T10:00:49","slug":"roger-mudd-the-golden-age-tv-news-star-who-watched-the-networks-fade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/roger-mudd-the-golden-age-tv-news-star-who-watched-the-networks-fade","title":{"rendered":"Roger Mudd: The Golden-Age TV News Star Who Watched the Networks Fade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Marty Lederhandler\/AP Photo Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author. On Sunday, Nov. 4, 1979, more than 80 million Americans watched the first network broadcast of Jaws on ABC. Barely a quarter of that number watched a documentary on CBS, but they saw blood in the water, too. In what became the most memorable moment of a distinguished, decadeslong news career, correspondent Roger Mudd posed this question to Sen. Edward Kennedy, days before Kennedy officially announced he would challenge President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination: &#8220;Why do you want to be president?&#8221; &#8220;It was probably the slowest pitch I&#8217;d ever thrown at a presidential candidate,&#8221; Mudd later wrote in his memoir. &#8220;So basic was the question, and so easy should have been the answer, that most reporters never asked it, for fear of being labeled pushovers.&#8221; Kennedy&#8217;s halting, near-incomprehensible answer &#8212; you can watch it here &#8212; shocked even some of his strongest admirers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1928-2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,106],"tags":[19,163],"class_list":["post-203193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-tv-videos","tag-entertainment","tag-tv-videos"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}