Trout, Robert (1908—)

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Trout, Robert (1908—)

Robert Trout was radio broadcasting's first true anchorman. The concept was purely a practical innovation: the networks' foreign correspondents and highly paid analysts were the stars, yet someone had to introduce their reports, kill time during technical problems, or read late-breaking bulletins as they poured into the studio. Trout was hand-picked for this role as war clouds gathered over Europe in 1938, and gradually—broadcast after broadcast, day after day, crisis after crisis—he turned what had been a simple announcer's chore into a star role, creating the "broadcast news" institution that continues to this day.

Trout came out of local radio in Washington. Assigned to introduce President Roosevelt's "fireside chats," FDR was said to be so impressed with the young announcer's ad-libbing skill, he sometimes delayed the start of his talk a few seconds just to see how Trout would fill the time. The CBS network soon beckoned, even as the European situation worsened. The networks were beefing up their news operations, assigning correspondents to every major world capital; when the March 1938 German-Austrian crisis exploded, CBS brass picked Trout to sit in the studio, reading the late bulletins and introducing reports from the network's far-flung correspondents. And while the job could (and, on NBC, was) handled by any number of nameless staff announcers, Trout took the role at CBS and made it his own.

Broadcasting legend, of course, holds that the great innovation of that Austrian crisis was the invention of the "news roundup," the blending of several European correspondents' reports into a single live broadcast. Indeed, even the notion of CBS letting its own European staff speak on the air was an innovation in these pioneering days, but the idea of Trout holding the coverage together from New York, broadcast after broadcast—one steady, instantly identifiable voice speaking for the network over the long days or weeks of crisis—was equally revolutionary, and Trout seemed instinctively to understand the potential of his new role. His delivery was fast and facile, his manner urbane but not arrogant, his voice authoritative yet not pompous. By the time Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, it was impossible to imagine coverage of a major event without Trout at the CBS microphone, smoothly steering listeners from one event to the next, juggling shortwave reports and incoming bulletins while masterfully hitting every cue and station break.

Strangely, NBC never imitated this single "Voice of Authority" idea; even Trout's own bosses seemed not to realize what they had created. When CBS European chief Edward Murrow returned from his London posting in late 1941, the network brass sent Trout overseas—as a reporter. It was an obvious sign that they understood Trout's star status, yet the admittedly prestigious London assignment was ill-advised at best. Trout acquitted himself adequately, but his absence from the New York studio deprived CBS of the central force that had spearheaded its crisis coverage for so long. Without him, CBS's coverage of the attack on Pearl Harbor seemed particularly disjointed and rudderless.

Trout was back in New York by midwar, turning the London job back over to Murrow, and picking up right where he'd left off. It was Trout whose voice sounded across the nation just after 3:30 on the morning of June 6, 1944: "This means invasion!" he intoned, and America knew the D-Day landings were officially under way. It was Trout whose leaden, disbelieving tones addressed the nation upon the unexpected death of President Roosevelt in April 1945, and it was Trout (after sleeping on a cot just outside the studio for several days, so as not to miss the big moment) who told the world at 7 p.m. on August 14, 1945, "The Japanese have accepted our terms fully … this, ladies and gentlemen is the end of the Second World War!"

Tougher times followed. Murrow again returned to New York, this time taking a job as chief of CBS's news operation. In 1946, Trout was given a real plum: his own nightly broadcast, a five-evening-a-week extravaganza sponsored by Campbell's Soup. It didn't last long. By 1948, Murrow realized he hated the executive suite, and Camp-bell's jumped at the chance to return the legendary broadcaster to the air … alone. Trout was off the show, a pill so bitter he resigned and defected to NBC for a time before patching things up and returning to CBS in the early 1950s.

And there he stayed, reporting everything from political conventions to the 1961 Alan Shepard spaceflight to a series of war-years retrospectives in the mid-1960s. His one big television break came in 1964, when low ratings and behind-the-scenes turmoil led CBS bigwigs to oust Walter Cronkite from the anchor chair, replacing him with Trout and Roger Mudd—a combination which was a blatant effort to copy the wild success of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley team. Trout and Mudd did no better against NBC, however, and viewer protests quickly guaranteed Cronkite's return to center stage.

Trout continued to work on radio, reporting on the political conventions into the late 1980s (more recently for ABC). He could always be counted on to reminisce about the war years or the glory days of network radio.

—Chris Chandler