01h
•
Feature
Story
• The
World of Sam
Donaldson.
•
•
From the co-publisher/co-founder
of TVI Magazine in 1956 -- to
ABC's Legendary Newsman -- Sam
Donaldson knows almost everything
and anything about News
reporting.
•
•
"When
Sam A. Donaldson became part of
ABC's roving television
correspondents, no one was sure
what to expect.
•
•
His
immense impact on his television
audience was owed to the dynamism
of his personality and the
upheavals at home and abroad that
marked his ability to report the
news as it happened. His macho,
patrician features, leonine
bearing and strong, resonant
voice all reflected his
invincible self-assurance when he
would demand -- Hold on Mr.
President!" Click
For Sam Donaldson's First News
Report, April 1956 article
"1939"
02
TimeLine / Biography:
Sam Donaldson ABC
News Correspondent
Sam Donaldson, Date of Birth:
March 11,
1934.
•
•
Samuel
Andrew Donaldson, Jr. was born in
El Paso, Texas, and grew up just
across the state line in
Chamberino, New Mexico. His
father died before he was born,
leaving his mother and one older
brother to run the family's
cotton and dairy farm. His mother
drove 25 miles every morning and
night to take him to school in El
Paso.
• •
He
became interested in broadcasting
at an early age and, after
graduating from New Mexico
Military institute, majored in
telecommunications at Texas
Western. He immediately began
working at local stations as a
disc jockey, announcer and
interviewer. While still in El
Paso, he had his first taste of
television, working as an
announcer in the region's first
television
station.
• •
While
attending graduate school at the
University of Southern
California, Donaldson met
publisher Al Preiss, and they
both formed TELEvisionFILM
Magazine. Both seeing where the
international television market
was heading, the name was changed
shortly thereafter to Television
International Magazine.
At that
same time, an enthusiastic young
Republican, Donaldson travelled
to El Paso, to work for the
Eisenhower campaign over the
summer of 1956, arranging the El
Paso stop of Vice President
Nixon. This was only the first of
many encounters with the nation's
political leaders, but
Donaldson's politics were to
change dramatically over the
years to come.
• •
The
following autumn, Sam Donaldson
reported to Fort Bliss to fulfill
his military service as an ROTC
commissioned second lieutenant of
air defense artillery. Although
the defense cutbacks of that year
shortened Donaldson's obligation
to six months, he volunteered for
another two years of active
duty.
• •
After
receiving his honorable discharge
in the spring of 1959, he settled
in Dallas and found work as a
television announcer at the local
CBS affiliate. At 26, he was
restless and ambitious and, after
only a year in Dallas, left the
Southwest for the first time to
seek his fortune in New York
City. After initial setbacks in
New York, he found a job at WTOP,
the CBS affiliate in Washington,
D.C. He has lived in the
Washington area ever
since.
• •
He rose
through the ranks of WTOP's news
department, and had just been
promoted to weeknight anchorman
in 1967 when he accepted an offer
from ABC News. At the time, ABC's
news division, chronically
underfunded and understaffed, ran
a distant third among the three
networks. In his first decade at
ABC, Donaldson's work attracted
little attention, but he
persisted, covering the
presidential campaigns of Barry
Goldwater, Eugene McCarthy, and
Hubert Humphrey, as well as the
Vietnam War and
Watergate.
• •
The
turning point came in 1977, when
he was assigned to cover the
incoming Carter administration as
ABC's Chief White House
Correspondent. Donaldson's
aggressive style of questioning,
much assisted by his powerful
speaking voice, quickly drew the
attention of the public and the
immense irritation of the White
House staff.
• •
Later
that year, the fortunes of ABC's
news operation took a precipitous
turn for the better with the
appointment of Roone Arledge as
head of the division. Arledge,
who had already revolutionized
television sports coverage,
brought the same hard-driving
approach to the news operation.
He expanded coverage, and lured
distinguished news personalities
from the other networks with
unprecedented salary
offers.
• •
Donaldson
prospered too, and the next
change of administrations in
Washington offered Donaldson a
perfect opportunity to make an
impression on the public.
Although President Reagan held
relatively few press conferences,
Donaldson took every opportunity
to press difficult questions on
the new President. Television
audiences became familiar with
the sound of Donaldson's voice
booming over the rest of the
White House press corps, even
over the drone of the President's
helicopter, as the Chief
Executive dashed across the South
Lawn to escape his relentless
inquisitors.
• •
By
1981, in addition to his White
House duties, Donaldson was
serving as anchor of World News
Sunday and taking an occasional
turn as moderator of Issues and
Answers, a long-running Sunday
morning political discussion
programs. Towards the end of
1981, a new program, This Week
with David Brinkley, replaced
Issues and Answers in the Sunday
morning line-up. At first, Sam
Donaldson only appeared on the
program on a rotating basis with
other correspondents, but he soon
became a permanent member of the
panel, questioning guests for the
first half of the program and
joining in the roundtable
discussion with Brinkley and
newspaper columnist George Will
for the second
half.
• •
After
the 1988 presidential campaign,
Donaldson left the White House
post. He continues his duties on
World News Sunday and, since
1989, as a co-host of Prime Time
Live. Since David Brinkley's
retirement, Donaldson and Cokie
Roberts have co-hosted the
program, renamed This Week. Sam
Donaldson lives in McLean,
Virginia with his third wife,
television reporter Jan Smith. He
has four children from two
previous
marriages.
• •
This
Biography and Video Clip was last
revised on Feb 04, 2005 by
Achievement
Academy
03.
Special
Feature
/
"1939" By
Sam Donaldson. A reprint from
TELEFILM Magazine, (Television
International Magazine), dated
April 1956, cover on next
page.
The
History of a Great
Industry is Always Interesting.
•
•
Not only is it extremely
revealing from a purely factual
standpoint, it is usually a
graphic
tribute to a handful of men who
had the gift of foresight and
believed in the impossible. But,
history tends to become confused
with time, events are all too
quickly clouded if they are not
recorded as they happen.
TELEvisionFILM Magazine,
(Television International
Magazine) -- decided to trace
video film back to its very
beginnings. We wanted to uncover
the material facts surrounding
the first film series especially
produced for
television.
•
•
The task was not as simple as it
might have been. Although TV film
is thought of as being something
comparatively recent the
visionaries who pioneered the
industry were hard at work long
years ago. Any history of the
first film series must also be
divided into several categories.
There was a first series, a first
sponsored series, a first
children's series, etc. In this
brief account, then, we do not
attempt to include all of the
many names and dates involved in
tv films family tree. We do
sketch an accurate picture of the
progress from the cradle to the
point where film put on its first
pair of long
pants.
•
•
The year was 1939. W6XAO, one of
the nation's first experimental
stations, had recently gone on
the air in Los Angeles with
transmitting facilities atop Mt.
Lee. There were only a few
receiving sets, with postage
stamp size screens, in its
limited coverage area. Live
television was getting its start,
and at the same time television
film was beginning also.
•
•
Patrick Michael Cunning, a young
movie producer, had just made a
feature film entitled Stars For
Tomorrow with a cast and crew of
300 unknowns. After the premiere
at the Hollywood Pantages
Theatre, Ray Coffin, then program
director of W6XAO, congratulated
Cunning on his work with these
newcomers and advised him to take
his troupe into television.
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