CBS News Radio signs off Friday night after nearly 100 years of broadcasting: “An American institution”
CBS News Radio, which broadcasts news programs to about 700 stations across the United States, will end its broadcasts Friday evening after nearly a century of broadcasting.
The legendary service, launched in September 1927, was home to broadcast legends Edward R. Murrow, Robert Trout, Douglas Edwards, Charles Osgood, Dan Rather and many other familiar and trusted voices during its decades of operation.
“It’s been around for a long time. Really, it’s an American institution that we’re losing here,” said Steve Kathan, longtime anchor of the CBS World News Roundup.
“CBS Radio should be remembered for becoming a very important national institution for the development of non-newspaper news,” “CBS Sunday Morning” said fairly recently. “For many, many years, it was part, and I would even say not a small part, of what held the country together.”
The decision to close the radio news service was announced in March, with the company citing “challenging economic realities”.
In a statement at the time, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss paid tribute to CBS News Radio’s historic role in covering major events around the world since the dawn of the broadcast era.
“For nearly 100 years, CBS News Radio has provided original reporting to the nation – from Edward R. Murrow’s reporting on World War II in London to today’s daily updates from the White House,” they said. “Our flagship show, ‘World News Roundup,’ remains the nation’s longest-running newscast. CBS News Radio has served as the foundation for everything we’ve built since 1927.”
CBS News Radio first hit the airwaves just seven years after what is widely recognized as the first commercial radio broadcast.
The first broadcast of baseball’s World Series could be heard on CBS News Radio in 1938, and in 1939, an interview with Babe Ruth was broadcast.
CBS News Radio brought millions of Americans coverage of major events, including the attack on Pearl Harbor and the D-Day invasion, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the New York blackout of 1977, the Gulf War, September 11 terrorist attacksand the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
Murrow’s voice was first heard on the air in 1938. As “CBS Sunday Morning” recently recounted, he was in Europe recruiting voices for radio, but after observing how dangerous Hitler was, he fired a broadcast.
“This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna. It is now nearly 2:30 a.m. and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived. No one seems to know exactly when he will arrive here. But most people are expecting him tomorrow morning after 10 a.m.,” Murrow said in this report.
He later reported from the rooftops of London during the Blitz and from the Buchenwald concentration camp after the Germans fled.
“I’m not looking for adjectives to make this dramatic,” he said in a war report. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”
The legendary broadcaster was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.
CBS host and correspondent Allison Keyes covered the news in Lower Manhattan on 9/11.
“People needed to know what was happening that day” Keyes said“In real time, without filter, without politics. This is what is happening.”
As CBS News Radio’s final days approached, she and her colleagues reflected on his legacy.
“This leaves a huge void in the information field,” Keyes said. “I want listeners to know how proud and honored I am to have worked for this incredible place, with these amazing people.”
