Today's MSM Sanford "Sandy" Socolow, who worked at CBS News for 32 years, more than four of them as Cronkite's producer, said Cronkite ran into trouble soon after he took over for Douglas Edwards in the "CBS Evening News" anchor chair. "The first night up, he ended the show by saying, I'm paraphrasing, 'That's the news. Be sure to check your local newspapers tomorrow to get all the details on the headlines we are delivering to you.'" That didn't fly. "The suits -- as we used to call them -- went crazy," Socolow told CNN, referring to CBS executives. "From their perspective, Cronkite was sending people to read newspapers instead of watching the news. There was a storm." CBS News President Richard Salant met with Cronkite, who initially resisted, then agreed to change his sign-off, Socolow said.
"In the absence of anything else, he came up with 'That's the way it is.'" "That's the way it is" was born after boss hated Cronkite's first sign-off. Anchor didn't like mixing news with opinion or commercial interests. He didn't even want to promote stories coming the next day, producer says. "He was a purist," Socolow said. "And, a lot of people would say, to a fault, if there can be a fault in such a definition." For example, he said, around the time of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, in which a nuclear plant's core partially melted, the movie "China Syndrome" was released with a similar theme. "I was so knocked out to its proximity to the events of the day, I arranged a screening for the entire staff of the 'Evening News,'" Socolow said. Though Cronkite did not attend, "the next day, I go into him and say, 'You know this is really uncanny that this movie should be so close to the bone, and it's just stunning, a stunning coincidence, and I think we could make a story out of it.' "He shouted at me, 'I'm not in the goddamn business of selling movie tickets.'" Cronkite even disliked promoting pieces that were slated to run in the next day's newscast, Socolow said. "His attitude being, 'For God's sake, we don't know what tomorrow's news is going to be. How the hell can we take time away from reporting today's news by promoting a story for tomorrow?'"
The epitaph on his headstone should read, “The last newscaster”. That said, David Brinkley and Chet Huntley weren’t bad either.