Journalists and media experts on Friday mourned the shuttering of CBS News Radio, the nearly century-old radio network that will end in May as part of CBS News’ 6% staff reduction.
The network, which serves 700 affiliate stations, will shut down on May 22, and all of its staff will be cut. CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski said the decision to end the radio network was “necessary” in a memo to staffers on Friday, writing that a shift in radio programming strategies and “challenging economic realities” have made it “impossible to continue the service.”
But journalists across the media industry lamented the decision to end the network, which launched in 1927 and was the last of the original three radio networks to remain in operation after the NBC Radio Network and the Mutual Broadcasting System ended in 1999. CBS sold its owned-and-operated stations in 2017, though the unit’s team still produced content for the affiliates. (Some national radio networks, such as ABC News Radio and Fox News Radio, remain in operation.)
CBS News Radio’s newscast, “World News Roundup,” is the longest-running radio newscast in the U.S., and the radio network is where CBS legend Edward R. Murrow delivered his vivid dispatches from Europe during World War II.
“CBS News Radio is an institution, where generations of the finest journalists in the country spent their careers reporting the news and holding people in power to account.,” the Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) and Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) said in a statement.
“The decision to simply shutter CBS News Radio is indicative of Bari Weiss and [Paramount CEO] David Ellison’s inept leadership,” the guild continued. “The dozens of CBS journalists laid off today have served the American people through their talent and dedication.”
CBS News did not respond to an immediate request for comment on how the network decided to end its radio broadcast.
Fox News anchor John Roberts wrote on X that, during his tenure at CBS News, he spent his Sunday afternoons reading headlines for the radio network’s 3 p.m. program before anchoring the evening edition of “CBS Evening News.”
“My very best wishes to all who will be left behind by the shuttering of this venerable institution,” he wrote.
Media professor Michael Socolow questioned in an X post the decision to let the radio network’s talent go, particularly as more news outlets lean into audio through podcasts. “My guess is this is easiest way to replace CBS News radio with Free Press podcasts,” he wrote, referring to Weiss’ anti-woke website that CBS News-parent Paramount purchased in October.
“Of all the newsroom cuts, this is by far one of the worst,” David Cruz, Newsday’s deputy politics editor, wrote on X. “So many good journalists work in radio, carrying out the art of weaving storytelling with fact-based news. I used to work at CBS back in the day and worked with dedicated journalists on a craft that’s becoming a lost art.”
“This is so sad. Radio is so essential for commuters, rural Americans, and many others,” journalist Marcus Baram wrote on X, adding: “CBS News was a rare bright spot — just straightforward news.”
Sports commentator Mark Followill wrote on X that, during his tenure in radio news, hearing the voice of a CBS News personality meant he knew he “was getting well delivered news covering important things happening in the world.”
“And dreamed of what it’d be like to be in that chair,” he wrote. “A sad day indeed.”
A former journalist turned political adviser and pundit, David Axelrod, said CBS News Radio’s “legacy is enormous.”
CBS News Radio’s “Roundup” program launched on March 13, 1938, a broadcast marking Edward R. Murrow’s first for CBS News. His first report documented residents in Vienna, Austria, anticipating Adolf Hitler’s arrival in the city as the Nazi leader traveled through Europe, nearly 18 months before World War II began.
“Everything is quiet in Vienna tonight,” Murrow, then 29, said as he concluded his report. “There’s a certain air of expectancy about the city, everyone waiting and wondering where and at what time Herr Hitler will arrive.”
Murrow continued producing radio reports from Europe throughout the war, becoming one of the first people on the ground at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in 1945.
Radio was also a passion for Walter Cronkite, the venerable “Evening News” anchor who Weiss invoked during her January town hall as a symbol of trust. Before he joined CBS News in 1950, Cronkite worked as a sports announcer at a local station in Oklahoma City, and he later compiled multiple collections of the “Greatest Old-Time Radio Shows of the 20th Century.”
While Cronkite left the “Evening News” desk in 1981, his final network role was narrating a 90-second radio segment for CBS News Radio from 1987 to 1992 titled “Walter Cronkite’s 20th Century,” according to his 2009 obituary.
The decision to end CBS News Radio came just days after “CBS Mornings” aired a segment reported by outgoing justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane that profiled University of Maryland men’s basketball radio announcer Johnny Holliday.
“As a new generation turns to viewing on tiny screens, Holliday remains a throwback to a different era,” he said in a voice-over. “Where everyone knew the local radio man’s name.”
