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CBS News Sunday Morning
'Sunday Morning's Sun logo for Sunday news used from 1982 to 1999
Format	Newsmagazine
Starring	Charles Osgood (1994–present) Charles Kuralt (1979–1994; deceased)
Country of origin	United States
Production
Running time	90 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Original run	1979 – present
External links
IMDb profile

CBS News Sunday Morning is an early morning newsmagazine program CBS airs on Sunday mornings. The typical time is from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. ET, though west coast stations often air it earlier due to conflicts with sports programming later in the day. Sunday Morning premiered in 1979. Original host Charles Kuralt hosted the program until 1994, when he was replaced by Charles Osgood.

Sunday Morning is considered one of television's highest-quality newsmagazine shows, and a throwback to the "old guard" CBS style of thoughtful news broadcasting.^{[citation needed]} The style was briefly copied by the weekday CBS Morning News broadcast anchored by Bob Schieffer as Morning (Kuralt eventually took over the daily role). However, the show's then-limited 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. ET air time (the long-running Captain Kangaroo was entrenched in the 8 o'clock hour) hampered its ability to compete with NBC and ABC's rival two-hour morning shows, though it expanded to an hour and a half in 1981. The CBS weekday program, now a full two hours on the East Coast, is now known as The Early Show.

Each episode follows a sort of story totem pole in the center of the CBS soundstage. Each story covered in a given episode has a glass plate with its headline on this pole, which the camera follows after Osgood's introductions. Osgood introduces each story with a short monologue, then sends the show out to the pre-taped segment. The show usually ends with a 60 second scene of a tranquil scene of plants and/or animals. After that, a subtle plug is delivered by Osgood for his radio commentaries, with the closing "I'll see you on the radio."

The program has been described as a "Sunday newspaper in a [television] tube". Notably, Sunday Morning includes significant coverage of the fine and performing arts, including coverage of topics usually not covered in network news, such as architecture, painting, ballet, opera, and classical music, though increasingly more popular forms of music have been included. The program chooses to ask untraditional questions of guests; for instance, it asked actor Brad Pitt about his love of architecture, and Grant Hill about his painting collection. Television essays similar to the kinds delivered on PBS also show up, and the program generally has a stable of positive and negative news stories to fill up the program when there is no breaking news of note. Story lengths are longer and the pace of the program is considerably relaxed from the weekday Early Show. Recurring segments occur with commentators Ben Stein and Nancy Giles delivering their opinion, and with correspondent Bill Geist doing human interest stories. [1] [2] Despite the stereotype of the program appealing towards senior citizens [3], the show actually placed first among its time slot in the key 25-54 demographic. [4]

On one occasion, the program has served as a showcase for an entire classical music program. This was in April 1986, when it presented a live broadcast of Vladimir Horowitz's historic Moscow piano recital. For that presentation only, the program departed from its usual newsmagazine format and devoted the entire ninety minutes to a complete presentation of the recital. Because the recital was given at 4:00 P.M. Moscow time, CBS was able to broadcast it at 9:00 A.M., E.D.T. The presentation was such a critical and popular success that it was repeated only two months later, and subsequently released o VHS and DVD.

The program is marked by its distinctive "Sun" logo. In addition, in between some segments images of the sun in various forms also appear. The show's theme is the trumpet fanfare "Abblasen", attributed to Gottfried Reiche. A recording of the piece on baroque trumpet by Don Smithers was used as the show's theme for many years, until producers decided to replace the vinyl recording with a digital one on a piccolo trumpet by former Tonight Show musical director Doc Severinsen. The current version is played by Wynton Marsalis. [5]

On January 25, 2004, CBS News celebrated the 25th anniversay of Sunday Morning with clips and highlights from the show's past 25 years. Host Charles Osgood revealed clips from former host Charles Kuralt.

Charles Kuralt, Host from 1979-1994

Sorted chronologically by start date

• Charles Kuralt, Host, 1979-1994
• Ron Powers, Film, Book, and Drama Reviews, 1979-1988
• Martha Teichner, Correspondent, 1979-
• Eugenia Zuckerman, Classical Music Correspondent, 1980-
• Billy Taylor, Jazz and Modern Music Correspondent, 1981-
• Bill Geist, Correspondent, 1987-
• Roger Welsch, Correspondent and Postcards From Nebraska Correspondent, 1988-
• John Leonard, Film, Book, and Drama Review, 1988-2005
• Faith Daniels, Correspondent, 1988-1989
• Terence Smith, Correspondent, 1990-
• Tim Sample, Correspondent, 1993-
• Charles Osgood, Host, 1994-
• Nancy Giles, Correspondent, 2002-
• Serena Altschul, Correspondent, 2003-
• David Edelstein, Film and Television Critic, 2005-
• Erin Moriarty, Correspondent,
• Ben Stein, Commentator,
• Rita Braver, National Correspondent 1998-
• Bill Flanagan, Rock Music Critic

• Official Website
• CBS News Sunday Morning at the Internet Movie Database
• Article by former contributor about how Sunday Morning needs to extend its brand past just its network TV timeslot