by Lloyd A. de Vries.
A philatelist friend alerted me that this cover featuring ABC News anchors Max Robinson, Peter Jennings and Frank Reynolds, and autographed by each of them. I presently work as a freelance writer for ABC News, so I bid a few dollars and won it. With shipping and sales tax, my total was $4.52.
It’s not a pretty cover, and I wasn’t sure of its significance.
The description said “1976,” but upon closer examination, the postmark dates are 1978. When I brought it to work, coworkers pointed out that that was the year ABC’s evening television newscast was reformatted and named “World News Tonight,” which is its present name, in July 1978.
Robinson, the first African-American to anchor a major network’s newscast, was stationed in Chicago, with an emphasis on domestic news. Jennings anchored from London (thus the British stamp and cancel), reporting on foreign news. And Reynolds was in the network’s Washington bureau, for political news. There are Chicago, Washington and, for some reason, Buffalo NY cancels on the U.S. flag stamp.
The (upside-down) reverse of the envelope has a London “backstamp” as well. There is no clue who produced the cover or whether more than one was produced.
According to Wikipedia, the format worked, and the ABC newscast eventually overtook both the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, for the first ratings win in the news division’s history.
In 1983, Reynolds became ill and eventually died from bone cancer. Robinson’s personal problems took their toll, and he was pushed aside to the weekend edition, and Jennings became the sole anchor.
The autographs are probably worth more than the cover is as a philatelic item. It isn’t really “postal history,” either, because what it documents isn’t postal. I still think it’s a fun cover to own, and I’m glad I have it.
Nice. Thanks for sharing Lloyd.
Interesting item. The London postmark is from November (Buffalo from August), but I can’t read the London year date. Perhaps the person who created the cover lived in Buffalo or worked for the ABC affiliate there. Someone had the connections to get the autographs. And somehow it got three machine cancels on (apparently) a single stamp with no forwarding markings. The British stamp on the front with the postmark on the back is also odd. Covers like this keep the ole gray cells functioning!
CBS News in that era had a daily “courier” shipment between NYC and London, which was a faster, cheaper (for an employee) way to ship something there. I imagine ABC News had something similar. I don’t know if the networks still do that, now that we have the Internet and video isn’t on film or tape. But that might have facilitated the front London postmark.