Just shy of the century mark since its first broadcast, CBS News Radio signs off for the final time tonight, closing a service that defined the sound of American broadcast journalism, trained generations of news talent, and reached and informed tens of millions of listeners every week.
CBS News Radio traces its origins to 1927, when the Columbia Broadcasting System debuted as a network. Its news operation began in earnest on March 13, 1938, when Edward R. Murrow broadcast live from Vienna as Adolf Hitler’s troops invaded Austria, joined by reporters in Berlin, London, Paris, and Rome with Robert Trout anchoring in New York. That broadcast originated the World News Roundup, which continued as the nation’s longest-running newscast until tonight.
At its peak, CBS News Radio reached 32 million listeners weekly. The network won seven consecutive Radio Television Digital News Association awards for overall excellence from 2007 to 2013, an accomplishment that has not been duplicated.
In March, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski confirmed in an internal memo that May 22 would be the final broadcast day, citing a shift in radio station programming strategies and challenging economic realities that made continuation impossible.
Between 60 and 70 staff positions are being eliminated.
Harvey Nagler, who served as CBS News Vice President in charge of Radio from 1998 to 2016, called the closure a substantive loss for the industry and for the communities the network served.
“Today marks the end of an era in broadcast journalism and represents another substantive blow to our democracy,” Nagler wrote in RBR+TVBR partner publication Radio Ink. “CBS News Radio set the standard for objective news reporting. It was committed to unbiased independent journalism at a time when partisan reporting is the norm.”
“The greatest loss may be to the hundreds of small local stations in rural America whose only source of national and international news has been CBS. Many of these stations have already dramatically reduced their own local news operations,” he added.
Among the affiliates most directly affected are the former CBS Radio properties that were acquired by Audacy in 2017. Many are signing with ABC News Radio, but some former CBS News Radio talent are landing at Red Apple Media’s Worldwide News Network, which launches at midnight. Michael Wallace, Cooper Lawrence, Bill Rehkopf, and Matt Pieper are among the voices confirmed to be joining Worldwide, with more expected to follow. The moves signal that at least part of the institutional knowledge built at CBS News Radio will continue in some form, even as the network itself goes dark.
Dan Rather, who covered some of the defining moments of the 20th century for CBS, reflected on the network’s place in history in a conversation with Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning. Rather credited his years in radio with preparing him for his most famous role, saying, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that I would never have become the anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News had I not spent years working in radio.”
“CBS Radio should be remembered for becoming a national institution very important to the development of news other than newspapers. It, for many, many years, was a part, and I would argue not a small part, of what held the country together.”
