"CBS said that the voice of Walter Cronkite will continue to announce the 'CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.' "
In a related decision, CBS also announced that it will "respectfully reconfigure" portions of its "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" archive to create the highly revered late journalist's dramatic guest starring debut on the network's season finale of "The Ghost Whisperer."
"Cronkite" will "play" "Alfred Keagan" a lovable bank security guard who can't seem to face the loss of his Korean war-bride "Oki," played by Miyoshi Umeki (Bill Bixby's live-in maid "Mrs. Livingston" from "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" in her first network television appearance since retiring shortly after her own death in 2007.)
In what CBS promises will be a uniquely moving, highly emotional episode "Belinda" (series star Jennifer Love-Hewitt) first encounters Keagan when, as luck would have it, the sleepy bank he guards is held up on the very afternoon of his retirement. Grateful to Keagan for running across the crowded bank floor to leap on her, knock her to the floor and lay on top of her until the police arrive and pry the elderly widower off, Belinda offers to help Keagan cope with the loss of his beloved Uki.
She explains that the only way to feel sure that the dead people we love will find any measure of peace in the hereafter is to locate them right after they die in the form of bewildered ghosts, trick them, briefly trap them and discuss the situation with them in a rational manner "before they turn into a zombie version of themselves and you wake up looking at two bloody stumps screaming 'OH, GOD! SHE ATE MY HANDS! SHE ATE MY HANDS!' which, I'm sorry to say, happens a lot more than you'd think. A lot more."
In another series first, Belinda's fee is revealed to be $8,500 -- which includes candles, ghost capture and release.
Tomorrow: Going against deceased super-agent "Zombie" Lazar's advice, Karl Malden declines CBS "Streets of San Francisco" reunion offer. Actor prefers sweet release of cold, cold eternity to working in television another twelve days.