North Carolina Is Our Home

North Carolina Is My Home was a popular television production first broadcast on the UNC-TV Network and subsequently re-broadcast by PBS affiliates across the nation,

Charles Kuralt, a longtime correspondent for CBS News in New York, was born in Wilmington and after graduating from UNC, worked as a reporter for the Charlotte News, where he wrote Charles Kuralt's People", a column that won him an Ernie Pyle Award. 

He moved to CBS in 1957 as a writer, where he became well known as the host of the Eyewitness to History series. He traveled around the world as a journalist for the network, including stints as CBS's Chief Latin American Correspondent and then as Chief West Coast Correspondent.

Kuralt was said to have tired of what he considered the excessive rivalry between reporters on the hard news beats:

"I didn't like the competitiveness or the deadline pressure," he told the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, upon his induction into their Hall of Fame. "I was sure that Dick Valeriani of NBC was sneaking around behind my back and of course, he was, getting stories that would make me look bad the next day. Even though I covered news for a long time, I was always hoping I could get back to something like my little column on the Charlotte News."

When he finally persuaded CBS to let him try an idea for three months, it turned into a quarter-century project. On the Road became a regular feature on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. In 1967, Kuralt hit the road in a motor home with a small crew and avoided the Interstates in favor of the nation's back roads in search of America's people and their doings. 

He said, "Interstate highways allow you to drive coast to coast, without seeing anything".