In a career that parallels the rise and ebb of network television journalism, Reuven Frank helped shape the character of NBC News through his work as a writer and producer, a documentary and newsmagazine pioneer, a news division president, and especially through his innovative coverage of national party conventions. In 1956 Reuven Frank teamed Chet Huntley with David Brinkley to co anchor the political conventions, a move that catapulted the two correspondents and NBC News to national fame.

Beginning with his first job at NBC in 1950, Reuven Frank realized he had an affinity for the process of film editing and an appreciation for the visual power of television, which became the signature of his career in TV news. The process of shaping film clips into coherent stories left an indelible impression on Frank. Competitor CBS News had built its strong reputation in radio, which emphasized words. Camel News Caravan, NBC's original 15-minute evening news program, on which Frank served as a writer, evolved from the newsreel tradition. An early partisan of television, Reuven Frank sought to exploit the medium's advantage over newspapers and radio to enable the audience to see things happen. "Pictures are the point of television reporting," he wrote.

This visual sense is clearly evident in the coverage of political conventions. Frank developed a method for orienting a team of four floor reporters-all but lost in a sea of convention delegates-toward live cameras. He established a communication center that simultaneously controlled news gathering, reporting, and distribution. The filter center, linked to the entire crew, advised the decision level when a report was ready for air. On cue from the decision level, the technical team would air the report. This tiered system of communication control became the industry standard.

The Huntley-Brinkley Report premiered in October 1956, with Reuven Frank as producer, and lasted until Huntley's retirement in 1970, when the report was renamed The NBC Nightly News. Frank was the program's executive producer in 1963 when the report was expanded from 15 to 30 minutes. In a memo to his staff, Frank outlined NBC News policies for gathering, packaging, and presenting news reports. The guiding principle for developing NBC newscasts was based on Frank's belief that "the highest power of television journalism is not in the transmission of information but in the transmission of experience."

The early years of television provided Frank with opportunities to develop his ideas and to experiment with half-hour weekly series. In 1954 he introduced Background, which featured "history in the making" through specially shot films, expert commentary, and the newly designed process of electronic film editing. The documentary-style series went through several iterations, including Outlook, Chet Huntley Reporting, Time Present ... Chet Huntley Reporting, and Frank McGee Reports.

A fierce advocate of free speech, Reuven Frank staunchly defended television's right and obligation to deliver unsettling news. He supported rival CBS in controversies over the documentaries Harvest of Shame (1960) and The Selling of the Pentagon (1971). He championed network coverage of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Frank also produced the acclaimed NBC documentary The Tunnel, which depicts the escape of 59 East Germans beneath the newly constructed Berlin Wall in 1962. NBC aired the program over objections by the U.S. State Department, which delayed the broadcast because it came on the heels of the Cuban missile crisis. The Tunnel is the only documentary ever to win an Emmy Award as Program of the Year.

The Tunnel, as well as other programs, exemplified one of Reuven Frank's lasting contributions to the content of NBC News reports, his attention to narrative structure and visual images. In the I 963 operations memo to his staff, Frank wrote,

Every news story should, without sacrifice of probity or responsibility, display the attributes of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising and falling action, a beginning, a middle, and an end. These are not only the essentials of drama; they are the essentials of narrative. We are in the business of narrative because we are in the business of communication.

Among Frank's other innovative series are Weekend and NBC News Overnight. Weekend was a 90-minute late-night, youth-oriented newsmagazine introduced in 1974, which alternated with rock concerts and Saturday Night Live. Weekend evolved from First Tuesday (later called Chronolog), NBC's answer to 60 Minutes. Later, in response to competition from the innovative all-news-network CNN's late-night news feeds, Frank developed Overnight, a program hosted by Lloyd Dobyns and Linda Ellerbee and produced on a shoestring budget in a newsroom carved out of studio space. Overnight was a literate magazine show that affected a wry, thoughtful, and highly visual presentation of the news.

The title of Reuven Frank's memoir, Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wondrous Life of Network News, reflects his sense and appreciation of fortuitous timing. Frank credits former NBC president Robert Kintner for elevating the status of NBC News:

Those early years with Kintner emphasized news programs as never before, or since, on any network. There was money for reporters; there was money for documentaries; there was money for special programs. In his seven years as president, Kintner placed his stamp upon NBC as no one else in my four decades.

Reuven Frank left his mark on one of American tele­ vision's premier news reporting services. After advancing through several roles and contributing to the development of a worldwide TV news network, Frank became president of NBC News in the tumultuous year of 1968. He held that position through the coverage of watershed events in the history of TV news, until 1973 when he returned to producing special projects for NBC News. In 1982 Frank was asked again to head the News Division, which he did until 1984. Robert E. Mulholland, then president of NBC, said of Frank's contributions, "Reuven wrote the book on how television covers the political process in America, has trained more top broadcast journalists than anyone alive, and simply embodies the very best professional traditions of NBC News."

Frank produced documentaries for NBC News under a contract that expired in December 1986. At that time, network executives were cutting costs to maximize profits, and many loyal and experienced employees were let go, including Frank. He still comments on the television industry in radio features for All Things Considered on National Public Radio, Marketplace on Public Radio International, and as a columnist for The New Leader, a New York-based public-affairs magazine.