I always knew I wanted to be in front of the camera. But even after 10 years behind the scenes at CBS News producing live segments, celebrity profiles, and breaking news, I still hadn't been given the chance to be on TV.
In college, I got an internship at my local station in Honolulu one summer, and I just fell in love with broadcast news, reporting, and storytelling. After college, I started out at NBC, and I worked behind the scenes at 'Today' and 'Dateline.'
After more than 50 years of broadcasting on 'CBS News' and '60 Minutes,' I have decided to retire. It's been a wonderful run, but the time has come to say goodbye to all of my friends at CBS and the dozens of people who kept me on the air.
When I came to CBS it was the mother church. I mean that was - everybody wanted to go to work for CBS News.
Despite being a business journalist at the BBC for ten years, working behind the scenes on our high-profile news programmes, I was viewed by some in the organisation to be 'too common for telly.'
I loved fashion, I really did, but I was not obsessed with it. I wanted to be behind the scenes, like in that movie 'Broadcast News.' Holly Hunter - her I wanted to be.
I wound up auditioning, wound up getting in, and I was off to the races: I was putting in four more years after school to train to be an actor. I was 26 years old, and I still had a locker, for Christ's sake!
I always wanted to be a comedian, even when I was a little kid. I had a funny father who was in the news business, by the way. He was a radio news guy. So the news was always in my house, and funny was always in my house. It was sort of just baked into the DNA that I would do this for a living, but I can remember being less than 10 years old and dreaming about being a comedian.
I was really lucky to work at CBS news. I was blessed to be able to live my dream in many ways at CBS news.
When I came to Mumbai, I was working behind the scenes for 10 long years. Back then, music video budgets were insignificant and I had no assistant directors or art directors for most of the songs I directed.
You gleefully say, "I just thought of something!", when in fact your brain performed an enormous amount of work before your moment of genius struck. When an idea is served up from behind the scenes, your neural circuitry has been working on it for hours or days or years, consolidating information and trying out new combinations. But you take credit without further wonderment at the vast, hidden machinery behind the scenes.
As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is." To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.
As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: 'And that's the way it is.' To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.
When I stepped down from the evening news at the age of 65, in '81, things were still going well. Immediately after that, the whole tenor of the CBS News Department changed.
I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up, and I've wound up a zookeeper! I've been working with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years! I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and half show business. You can't ask for better than two things you love the most.
When I was a 21-year-old intern at CBS, I was told I had crossed eyes and shouldn't try to be on air. That's when I decided I was going to be behind the scenes.