NEW YORK — CBS News announced Friday it will shut down its radio news service on May 22, ending nearly 100 years of continuous operation and citing difficult economics as audiences move to digital sources and podcasts. Longtime CBS anchor Dan Rather said, “It’s another piece of America that is gone.”
The service began in September 1927 and helped launch William S. Paley’s rise in broadcasting. Broadcasters such as Edward R. Murrow—whose rooftop reports during the Nazi bombing of London in World War II were historic—Douglas Edwards, Dallas Townsend and Christopher Glenn became familiar voices to listeners. Radio was central to how Americans received news from the 1920s through the 1940s, from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” to Murrow’s coverage of Germany’s invasion of Austria in 1938.
At its peak, CBS News Radio was a major force in American journalism. Today it supplies material to an estimated 700 stations nationwide and is best known for its top-of-the-hour news roundups. But CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who informed staff of the decision, said the company “did everything we could, including before I joined the company, to try and find a viable solution to sustain the radio operation.” She added that with radical changes in the media industry, “we just could not find a way to make that possible.”
The network pared some radio programming late last year — including “Weekend Roundup” and “World News Roundup Late Edition” — in attempts to preserve the service. It was unclear how many jobs will be lost because of the shutdown; CBS News announced it was cutting about 6% of its workforce, roughly more than 60 people, on Friday. The network faces further turbulence amid corporate shifts involving parent company Paramount Global and industry consolidation.
Rather, who succeeded Walter Cronkite in 1981 and anchored for 25 years, said he was saddened but not surprised. He recalled filing reports as often as a dozen times a day during his coverage of the 1960s civil rights era and relaying major breaking news—like President John F. Kennedy’s assassination—for radio, when “radio was considered an equal responsibility to television.”
Industry observers noted the long decline of radio’s centrality since television’s rise in the 1950s. Michael Harrison, publisher of trade outlet Talkers, called the closure “a shame” and “a loss for the country and for the industry,” saying CBS News Radio once set a standard for trusted, high-quality, objective coverage.
The front page of CBS News’ website did not immediately reflect the announcement. Weiss, previously founder of the Free Press website and new to broadcast news before joining CBS under Paramount’s management, has been a polarizing figure; critics have watched her decisions closely, including a reported month-long hold on a “60 Minutes” story critical of the Trump administration’s deportation policy. In January, three months into her tenure as CBS News chief, Weiss invoked Cronkite’s legacy while warning that without change “we’re toast,” and announced new hires intended to produce reporting that would “surprise and provoke — including inside our own newsroom.”