It was a strong first quarter for “CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood.” The top-rated Sunday morning show averaged 5.83 million viewers, its best Q1 delivery since 1994.

“Sunday Morning” posted a 4.0/11 in households and a 1.6/08 in the A25-54 demographic for the quarter, its best Q1 delivery since 1995 and 2008, respectively. Compared to the year-ago quarter, the show was up +7% in viewers, +5% in households and +14% in the demo.

The program is also up +7% in both viewers and the demo and +8% in households season-to-date.

Among the stories this Sunday, correspondent Susan Spencer speaks with Rachel Robinson, widow of baseball legend Jackie Robinson. Robinson’s rookie year is the subject of the upcoming film “42.”

ABC/CNN’s Christiane Amanpour is among the honorees at WFUV Radio’s annual Spring Gala tonight. Amanpour is being honored with the Charles Osgood Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism.

“I’m delighted and honored to win this award,” says Amanpour “It’s a reminder, through the example of Charles Osgood, that great storytelling as well as persistently searching for the truth is the best kind journalism.”

Al Michaels is being honored with the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting and Chris Isaak is WFUV’s “Artist of the Year.”

WFUV is Fordham University’s NPR station. The ceremony will be held tonight at Gotham Hall.

In case you haven’t noticed lately, “CBS News Sunday Morning” is not just for the dentured set.

“It amuses me when people are surprised that we have younger viewers,” says Charles Osgood, 79, the show’s anchor and poet-in-residence. “They said the same thing about ’60 Minutes.’ It’s part of the reason the show is so good.”

And so popular. Week in and week out, the quirky, understated ‘Sunday Morning’ routinely beats NBC’s “Sunday Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America Sunday” in terms of households, viewers, and adults 25-54.

With a median age of 59.8, viewers of “Sunday Morning” are certainly not young, but they are the youngest of the troika, if only by a matter of months. It rankles Osgood to no end that advertisers consider adults 55 and older as the walking dead.

“It’s a mistake to think that people over 54 don’t buy anything and don’t go anywhere,” says Osgood, who succeeded the late, great Charles Kuralt in 1994. “It’s patently untrue, as all of us, including advertisers, are aware.

“Being 65 does not mean you’re old anymore. You’ve got a lot of living to do. You’re not going to sit around and watch Lawrence Welk.” (To those under 60, check Wikipedia.)

Like Osgood, executive producer Rand Morrison objects to the stereotype of “Sunday Morning” as a show for old folks. (He prefers to think of them as grown-ups.)

“I deny the allegation,” says Morrison, 61. “My niece has a “Sunday Morning” app. Younger people come up to me and voice their opinions about the show. People, at different times of

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In a special Christmas Morning performance, “CBS Sunday Morning” host Charles Osgood and singer Darlene Love will perform “White Christmas,” with Osgood at the ivories. This year marks the 25th anniversary of Love’s first appearance on David Letterman‘s show singing “Christmas, Baby Please Come Home” — now a Christmas tradition and an annual holiday event. On “Sundsy Morning” CBS’s Anthony Mason will also profile Love.

Here’s Love’s performance last night on Letterman.

Satirist Mo Rocca, who first became known to many viewers as a “correspondent” on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” is now a real TV news correspondent. Rocca has been named as a correspondent for CBS News, focusing on “CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood.”

Rocca has been a contributor to the program since 2006. He also contributes to the NPR program “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”

“His title is Correspondent, but we see Mo, as we see all our Sunday Morning contributors, as a ‘columnist,’ bringing his own unique – and it is unique – perspective to everything he does,”said “Sunday Morning” EP Rand Morrison in a statement.

Longtime CBS News executive Lane Venardos was fondly remembered Wednesday in a moving service at the Paley Center in New York City.

Venardos who died August 19 at his home in Maui, spent 30 years at CBS News producing live news, special events and documentaries. He would go on to produce the “Survivor” live finales for Mark Burnett on CBS.

More than 200 luminaries from across the television industry attended the memorial, including CBS News chairman Jeff Fager, News president David Rhodes; Charles Osgood, Scott Pelley, Bob Schieffer, Lesley Stahl, and Rita Braver; current “CBS Evening News” EP Pat Shevlin, CBS News VP Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews (who currently has the job Venardos once held) and “Sunday Morning” EP Rand Morrison.

Also Diane Sawyer, now with ABC News, who worked with Venardos during her time at CBS and from NBC: Brian Williams, News president Steve Capus and former CBSer, now EP of “Rock Center” Rome Hartman, were there, as was former CBS News president Andrew Heyward. ABC’s “This Week” EP Rick Kaplan, and former “GMA” boss Jim Murphy, both former CBS Newsers, attended.

Former CBS News and CBS, Inc. president Howard Stringer, who worked closely with Venardos during his years at CBS and who is now CEO of Sony, spoke via video. Other speakers included Pelley, Stahl, Williams and Venardos’s daughter Kelly who is a producer for “NBC Nightly News.” CBS News “48 Hours” EP Susan Zirinsky presented a video tribute (after the jump). The service concluded with a vocal solo performed by Venardos’s son, Kevin.

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Last weekend, “CBS Sunday Morning” had its largest audience in more than five years. The show drew 5.62 million viewers — its largest audience since February 19, 2006 and better than last week’s average of the Monday-Friday morning shows “Today,” (5.32M) “Good Morning America,” (4.79M) and “The Early Show” (2.51M). “Sunday Morning” averaged a 1.5 rating in A25-54 viewers, its best showing in the last month.

Season-to-date, Sunday Morning is up +3% in Total Viewers (5.14m vs. 4.98m) and up +8% in the A25-54 rating (1.4/07 vs 1.3/07). The image (right) is a “Thank You” staffers posted on Sunday Morning’s Facebook page today.

This Sunday on the show newly re-hired CBS Newser Lee Cowan reports on the film “The Artist,” which is set in the silent movie era, and is itself a silent, black & white film. Cowan is also going to be the fill-in host for Charles Osgood on occasion.

When I was an intern in the marketing department at WFRV-TV in Green Bay, the station was transitioning from an ABC affiliate to a CBS O&O. One thing I learned after CBS took over: don’t mess with the Eye; that iconic CBS Eye logo should be treated with respect and not used for just any old piece of marketing.

Almost 20 years after that internship, the CBS Eye endures. Today marks 60 years since the Eye made its debut during network station breaks, Saturday, October 20, 1951.

To celebrate, CBS.com will replace its current CBS Eye with the original Eye logo. When you hover over it, you will see a brief explanation of its significance, and clicking on it will send you to a classic Charles Osgood story about the creation and history of the CBS Eye. Tonight on TV, CBS will broadcast an on-air spot showcasing the various CBS Eye logos throughout the years and highlighting the significance of the date.

“From the Network to the Corporation, the CBS Eye is an enduring asset of our company and a major source of pride for all of us,” said Leslie Moonves, President and CEO of CBS Corp. “It is a corporate logo that is known and respected all around the world, and continues to be a fitting symbol of CBS’s proud history and ongoing leadership.”

Here’s a brief history of the Eye…

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(l to r) Jean Marie Condon (original executive producer, This Week with Christiane Amanpour), Amanpour, Katie Hinman (former producer, This Week) and Amanpour's assistant Maggie Thomas

Webster defines “Giant” as a person or thing of great size, intellect, etc.

Friday at a luncheon in New York, the Library of American Broadcasting honored nine individuals as Giants of Broadcasting.

The organization also gave the distinguished merit award to a program — “CBS Sunday Morning,” and the four people who made the show must-see TV each week for 32 years, including original host Charles Kuralt and current keeper of the Sunday Morning flame — Charles Osgood.

“The reason they’re honoring us, is certainly not for what we’re doing now, but for the years since it went on the air,” Osgood tells TVNewser.

He credits Kuralt, who died in 1995, and pioneering executive producer Robert “Shad” Northshield as the men with the show’s vision.

“They were the ones who really set the tone, [and] had the idea for doing a broadcast that would be a kind of a Sunday paper on the air,” Osgood says.

The time for the show, 9 a.m. eastern, allows a closer bond with the viewer.

“[You] can watch the broadcast with a second cup of coffee and the newspaper on the floor, maybe you’re in your slippers and bathrobe,” Osgood says. “So we feel it’s a kind of intimacy that you have with the audience.”

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CBS “Sunday Morning” continued its longtime ratings success  in the second quarter of 2011, posting a yearly increase of +8% in total viewers from the same quarter last year. The show, which is hosted by Charles Osgood, has been the top Sunday news program for the past 129 broadcasts.

The June 26 broadcast of “Sunday Morning” — which focused largely on the American economy — drew 4.15M total viewers. Year-to-date, the show is up +4% in total viewers.

CBS “Sunday Morning” airs from 9 – 10:30 a.m. on the east coast. Tomorrow’s program includes Ben Tracy reporting on Prince William and Kate Middleton’s trip to California, as well as a profile on Tom Jones by correspondent Mark Phillips.