Shortwave broadcast from London fed to CBS News and broadcast live from London by Ed Murrow. September 3, 1939. NBC and Mutual Broadcasting to suspend their European broadcasts left CBS with an open field. Murrow moved into the void, hiring additional staff to report from various capitals. Among those coming aboard that fall were Mary Marvin Breckinridge, an old college friend of Murrow’s who would become the first female national broadcaster; Cecil Brown, a journalist and former merchant mariner; Larry LeSueur of United Press; Winston Burdett of Harvard by way of the Brooklyn Eagle; Charles Collingwood, a Cornell alumnus; and Howard K. Smith, a champion hurdler from Tulane.
