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Sig Mickelson established gavel-to-gavel convention coverage, hired Walter Cronkite
TV news pioneer Siegfried "Sig" Mickelson, the first president of CBS News and one of the founders and one-time president of the RadioTelevision News Directors Association, died Friday, March 24, of pneumonia.
He was 86 and lived in San Diego.
Mickelson played a major role in developing TV news. He was president of CBS News from 1959 to 1961 but oversaw CBS' TV news department from its infancy in 1951 as the first director of news and public affairs, CBS Television.
In 1954, when the network merged its TV and radio news operations, Mickelson got the nod to run it as vice president and general manager, CBS News. Among his innovations...
