The next year, CTV, Canada's first private TV network and a fledgling competitor of his father's network, hired the 24-year-old Jennings as co-anchor of its late-night national newscast. While reporting for CTV, he was the first Canadian journalist to arrive in Dallas after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1964, CTV sent Jennings to cover the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. There, he ran into Elmer Lower, then president of ABC News, who offered him a job as a correspondent for the American network, an opportunity Jennings initially rejected. "The job was pretty intimidating for a guy like me in a tiny city in Canada," Jennings later recalled. "I thought, What if I screw up? What if I fail?" Three months later though, he changed his mind and moved to the United States.