Video: 'CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley - Cronkite's anchoring debut celebrates 50th anniversary'

(Monday, April 16, 1962, 6:45 p.m. EST, 7:15 p.m. in New York City) — Walter Cronkite, a former United Press reporter best known for hosting the CBS program You Are There, replaced Douglas Edwards as the anchorman tonight for CBS’s nightly feature newscast, tentatively renamed Walter Cronkite with the News, at that time a 15-minute program that ran from 6:45 to 7:00 pm EST (7:15-7:30 p.m. in New York City).

Video: '50 years of Walter Cronkite's America'

The name of the program was changed to the CBS Evening News on Sept. 2, 1963, when the show was expanded from 15 to 30 minutes, making Cronkite the anchor of American network television’s first nightly half-hour news program.

Cronkite, who would be nicknamed “The Most Trusted Man in America,” would anchor the news until his retirement in 1981, when he would be replaced by Dan Rather.