CBS producer Bernard Birnbaum is pictured in 1989. Birnbaum helped craft reports on subjects ranging from poverty to the Vietnam War to the Watergate scandal. (CBS/Associated Press)

Bernard Birnbaum, an award-winning CBS News producer who worked with such TV news legends as Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, has died at age 89.

The network announced that Birnbaum died Thursday at Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, N.Y., after suffering a heart attack while visiting relatives for American Thanksgiving.

As a producer for The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and other programs, Birnbaum was instrumental in the in-depth coverage of major U.S. events including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War and Watergate.

Birnbaum's daughter Amy, also a CBS News producer, says her father was a warm man who made people feel comfortable.

"He could ask people anything" and forge enduring friendships out of interviews, she said.

Born in Brooklyn on Oct. 18, 1920, Birnbaum pursued photography by working at a studio. He went on to serve as a U.S. Army Air Corps combat cameraman during the Second World War and afterwards finished a film degree from New York University.

He was hired by CBS as a lighting director in 1951 and worked for a decade producing short documentaries for Sunday Morning.

'Insatiable curiousity'

"What kept him going was an insatiable curiosity, so it really was a perfect fit to be a news broadcaster," said Amy Birnbaum.

He and Kuralt first joined forces on the groundbreaking 1964 documentary Christmas in Appalachia, about unemployed Kentucky miners. It was the first such program to examine the lives of poor people.

It was released at the same time then-president Lyndon Johnson launched his war on poverty.

Birnbaum's career blossomed, taking him into the war zone in Vietnam seven times, and garnering him seven Emmys. Among his award-winning pieces are: The Senate and the Watergate Affair from 1973, CBS REPORTS: The American Assassins in 1975, and CBS News Inquiry: The Warren Report in 1967.

He would go on to partner again with Kuralt on the series about small-town America, On the Road with Charles Kuralt and by 1990, he was back at Sunday Morning.

Birnbaum's funeral is scheduled for Tuesday in Larchmont, N.Y., where he lived.

With files from the Associated Press