Radio Daly began his broadcasting career as a reporter for NBC Radio and then
WJSV, the local
CBS Radio Network affiliate in Washington, D.C., as CBS'
White House correspondent. and he was also the first to relay the wire service report of the death of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, interrupting the program
Wilderness Road to deliver the news. Those bulletins have been preserved on historical record album retrospectives and radio and television documentaries. In July 1959, along with the
Associated Press writer
John Scali, Daly reported from Moscow on the infamous
Kitchen Debate between
First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President
Richard M. Nixon.
Television Daly's first foray into television was as a
panelist on the game show
Celebrity Time. at 1956 Presidential convention coverage According to producer
Gil Fates, Daly was resistant to changes that would have diminished the show's dignity. Daly insisted on a formal procedure; for example, he addressed the panelists as "Miss" or "Mister", and both Daly and the panelists always wore formal attire in keeping with the moderator's scholarly bearing. Toward the end of the network run, in the mid-1960s, Fates broached the idea of expanding the usual format to include playful, on-stage demonstrations of the contestants' products or services, for the sake of variety, only to be met with Daly's "Look, kiddo. If you want to do stuff like this, do it on ''
I've Got a Secret.''" The producers, Fates said, were unable to challenge Daly for fear of losing him as the show's moderator, and the format remained sedentary with Daly presiding from his desk. Only after Daly's departure was Fates able to expand the format, when the retooled ''What's My Line?'' was revived for syndication in 1968. The series spawned a brief radio version in 1952, also hosted by Daly. The series also inspired a multitude of concurrent international versions and a syndicated U.S. revival in 1968 in which Daly did not participate. He was a vice president at
ABC during the 1950s. He did hosting duties on
Who Said That?, ''
It's News to Me, We Take Your Word, and Open Hearing.
Daly was a narrator on The Voice of Firestone'' starting in 1958. He also had several television and movie guest appearances from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, including an uncredited role in
Bye Bye Birdie (as the reporter announcing the title character's induction into the Army) and as the narrator, in a mock documentary style, on the premiere episode of the rural comedy series
Green Acres. In 1949 he starred in the short-lived
CBS Television newspaper drama
The Front Page, where it was thought that his presence and journalistic experience would give the series more authenticity. During the 1950s, Daly became the vice president in charge of news, special events, and public affairs, religious programs and sports for ABC and won three
Peabody Awards. In addition, he provided the voice of a
Conelrad radio announcer on the May 18, 1954, broadcast of
The Motorola Television Hour on ABC titled
Atomic Attack, which showcases a story about a family in a New York City suburb dealing with the aftermath of an H-bomb attack fifty miles away. In addition to the Harpo Marx segment and most of the live telecasts of “What’s My Line?” preserved via
kinescope, at least a few of Daly's 15-minute live newscasts for the ABC network survive. Daly's closing line on the ABC newscasts was "Good night, and a good tomorrow." He resigned from ABC on November 16, 1960, after the network preempted the first hour of 1960 presidential election night coverage to show
Bugs Bunny cartoons and
The Rifleman from 7:30 to 8:30 pm while CBS and
NBC were covering returns from the
Kennedy–
Nixon presidential election and other important vote counts. Daly stated that "the last straw" that led to his resignation was the decision of the then-president of ABC, Leonard Goldenson, to bring in
Time Inc. to co-produce documentaries that had previously been under Daly's direction for the network. In May 1967, during the final year of ''What's My Line?'', it was announced that Daly would become the director of the
Voice of America after the show ended. He assumed the position on September 20, 1967, but lasted only until June 6, 1968, when he resigned over a claim that
Leonard H. Marks, his superior at the
U.S. Information Agency, had been making personnel changes behind Daly's back. ” President Kennedy impersonator
Vaughn Meader's appearance as the mystery guest on CBS Television's
What’s My Line? the evening of the
1962 NFL Championship Game, December 30, 1962. John Daly is on the right. From December 1968 to January 1969, Daly hosted the arts and humanities program "Critique" on
NET. Funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities, the Old Dominion Foundation (later the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), and the Louis Calder Foundation (paper industry leader), “Critique” was originally scheduled for 26 weekly programs. However, Daly resigned after only five programs because the producing station of the program,
Newark, New Jersey-licensed
WNDT, declined to delete a remark by WCBS radio reporter David Goldman that Daly considered obscene from a taped program in the series titled "Huui, Huui," an opening production of the
New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater. The most notable and last guest on a "Critique" program hosted by Daly was Bronx-born singer/songwriter/pianist
Laura Nyro, probably recorded on December 4, 1968, and originally broadcast on January 1, 1969, in which she performed demos of "
And When I Die," "The Man Who Sends Me Home," "Captain Saint Lucifer," "Mercy on Broadway," "You Don't Love Me When I Cry," and "
Save the Country," and also featured an interview with her manager
David Geffen. Following Daly's resignation, only one more episode of "Critique" was produced and broadcast, an April 1969 episode featuring
The Doors as the musical guests. Daly did not host the
syndicated version of ''What's My Line?'', although he did co-host a 25th-anniversary program about the show for ABC in 1975. Daly was a member of the
Peabody Awards
Board of Jurors from 1966 to 1982. He spent most of the 1980s as a frequent forum moderator for the
American Enterprise Institute, a conservative
think tank. ==Tilton School==