CBS News Radio Closing reason: CBS News Radio is closing down after 100 years of operation. Here is the reason
When it went on the air in September 1927, the service became the forerunner of the entire network and gave young William S. Paley a start in the business. Famous broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s rooftop news during the Nazi bombing of London during World War II caused Americans to listen with concern.
CBS News Radio was a major force for generations of Americans. “Its heyday lasted decades,” Harrison said. “It was of quality on every level. It sounded good. It covered the field of human nature as objectively as possible. Its sources were comprehensive. It had a very high trust factor, which was considered the standard of the day.”
CBS News Radio is Closing in May
Today, CBS News Radio provides material to an estimated 700 stations across the country and is best known for its current news recaps. The service will end May 22, the network said Friday.
“Radio is woven into the fabric of CBS News, and it will always be a part of our history,” CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said in delivering the news to staff. “I want you to know that we are doing everything we can, including before you joined the company, to try to find a workable solution to continue the radio operation.”
But due to radical changes in the media industry, “we couldn’t find a way to make that possible,” he said. CBS News cut some of its radio programming late last year, including “Weekend Recap” and “World News Roundup Edition” in an effort to keep the service going.
It is unclear how many people will lose their jobs as a result of the radio shutdown. CBS News was laying off nearly 6% of its workforce on Friday, or more than 60 people. Parent company Paramount Global’s Warner Bros. This isn’t the end of turmoil at the network, as it is likely to acquire CNN as part of its announcement of its acquisition of Discovery.
“I’m saddened, but not surprised, given the way things have turned out,” said Pretty, who replaced television legend Walter Cronkite in 1981 and hosted for 25 years.
While covering the civil rights era for CBS News in the 1960s, Pretty said he would report as often as a dozen times a day. Cronkite told America on television that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated; More precisely, he conveyed the news to the radio.
“Radio was seen as an equal responsibility to television,” Pretty, now 94, said in an interview.
Shortly after the birth of commercial radio in 1920, radio, along with newspapers, was the dominant means by which Americans received news until the 1940s; people were sitting in their living rooms listening to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” during the Depression. CBS News Radio’s coverage of the German invasion of Austria in 1938, when Murrow was first heard on the air, was a historic mark for the service.
Broadcasters like Douglas Edwards, Dallas Townsend and Christopher Glenn were familiar voices on CBS News Radio. The dawn of the television era in the 1950s began a long shift to radio; Nowadays the world is online and on phones it was mostly an afterthought. Audio seekers often turn to podcasts before radio.
“This is another piece of the landscape that has fallen overboard,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a commercial broadcaster for radio talk shows. “It’s a shame. It’s a loss for the country and the industry.”
