TV Show Details
Air Date:October 20th, 1957
Last Air Date:April 17th, 1966
Network:CBS
Status:Ended
Genres:Documentary , News
Original Language:English
The Twentieth Century on the Web:WikiData
The Twentieth Century (1957-1966)
CBS
Scripted
Audience Score
StarringWalter Cronkite
Plot
The Twentieth Century is a long-running CBS documentary television series that aired from 1957 to 1966, sponsored throughout its run by the Prudential Insurance Company and narrated by Walter Cronkite. Drawing on the resources of CBS News, the series produced both historical compilation documentaries and originally photographed contemporary reports, presenting major political, cultural, scientific, and social developments that shaped the modern world. Episodes combined newsreel footage, eyewitness testimony, and on-location reporting, covering subjects ranging from global conflicts and political change to arts, science, and international social transformation. Popular with audiences and critically respected, the series functioned as a formative model for later American television documentary programming and helped establish the compilation-documentary format as a central mode of broadcast nonfiction.
