CBS News shutters its storied radio news service after nearly a century, ending an era

NEW YORK (AP) — CBS News said Friday it volition unopen down its storied vigor quality work aft astir 100 years of operation, ending an epoch and blaming challenging economical times arsenic the satellite moves connected to integer sources and podcasts. Said longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather: “It’s different portion of America that is gone."

When it went connected the aerial successful September 1927, the work was the precursor to the full network, giving a youthful William S. Paley a commencement successful the business. Famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's rooftop reports during the Nazi bombing of London during World War II kept Americans listening anxiously.

Today, CBS News Radio provides worldly to an estimated 700 stations crossed the state and is known champion for its top-of-the-hour quality roundups. The work volition extremity connected May 22, the web said Friday.

“Radio is woven into the cloth of CBS News and that's ever going to beryllium portion of our history,” CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said successful delivering the quality to the staff. “I privation you to cognize that we did everything we could, including earlier I joined the company, to effort and find a viable solution to prolong the vigor operation.”

But with the extremist changes successful the media industry, she said, “we conscionable could not find a mode to marque that possible."

Not the archetypal vigor cuts astatine CBS

CBS News chopped immoderate of its vigor programming precocious past year, including its “Weekend Roundup” and “World News Roundup Late Edition,” successful an effort to support the work going.

It was unclear however galore radical volition suffer their jobs due to the fact that of the vigor shutdown. CBS News was cutting astir 6% of its workforce, oregon much than 60 people, connected Friday. It's not the extremity of turmoil astatine the network, arsenic genitor institution Paramount Global is apt to sorb CNN arsenic portion of its announced acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

“Given the mode things are going, I was saddened but I wasn't amazed by it,” said Rather, who succeeded web fable Walter Cronkite successful 1981 and anchored for 25 years.

When Rather covered the civilian rights epoch for CBS News during the 1960s, helium said helium would record reports arsenic often arsenic a twelve times a day. Cronkite told America connected tv that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated; Rather relayed the quality for radio.

“Radio was considered an adjacent work to television,” Rather, present 94, said successful an interview.

Along with newspapers, vigor was the ascendant mean successful however Americans got their quality from soon aft the dawn of commercialized vigor successful 1920 done the 1940s, with radical successful their surviving rooms listening to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's “Fireside Chats” during the Depression. CBS News Radio's broadcast astir Germany's penetration of Austria successful 1938, the archetypal clip Murrow was heard connected the air, was an historical marker for the service.

Broadcasters similar Douglas Edwards, Dallas Townsend and Christopher Glenn were acquainted voices connected CBS News Radio. The opening of the tv epoch successful the 1950s began a agelong descent for radio, often an afterthought contiguous with the satellite online and connected phones. Those seeking audio often crook to podcasts earlier radio.

“This is different portion of the scenery that has fallen disconnected into the sea,” said Michael Harrison, steadfast of Talkers, a commercialized work for vigor speech shows. “It's a shame. It's a nonaccomplishment for the state and for the industry.”

A large vigor subordinate for galore decades

CBS News Radio was a large unit for generations of Americans. “Its heyday spanned decades,” Harrison said. “It was prime connected each level. It sounded good. Its sum was arsenic nonsubjective arsenic imaginable wrong the realm of quality nature. Its resources were extensive. It had a precise precocious spot origin that was considered the modular of the day.”

The beforehand leafage of CBS News' website did not instantly transportation quality of the demise.

Weiss, laminitis of the Free Press website and without broadcast quality acquisition earlier being hired by CBS genitor Paramount’s caller management, has rapidly go a headline-maker and polarizing fig successful journalism. She held a “60 Minutes” communicative captious of President Donald Trump’s deportation argumentation from being broadcast for a period and has critics watching to spot if she’s moving the web successful a Trump-friendly direction.

Addressing her unit successful January, 3 months into her occupation arsenic CBS News boss, she invoked Cronkite's sanction arsenic a awesome of aged reasoning and said that if the web continues with its existent strategy, “we’re toast.” She announced the hiring of 18 caller contributors and said CBS News needs to bash stories that volition “surprise and provoke — including wrong our ain newsroom.”

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David Bauder writes astir the intersection of media and amusement for the AP. Follow him astatine http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

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