CBS News will shut down its radio news service on May 22, ending nearly a century of broadcasts as part of layoffs driven by shifting radio programming strategies and economic pressures, the company announced Friday.
The move brings to a close a service that has operated since September 1927 and currently supplies news content to about 700 stations nationwide, including its well-known top-of-the-hour updates.
“While this was a necessary decision, it was not an easy one,” CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski said in a memo to staff.
When it went on the air in September 1927, CBS News Radio was the precursor to the entire network, giving a youthful William S. Paley a start in the business. Famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow delivered reports from London during World War II as part of the service.
Over the years, broadcasters like Douglas Edwards, Dallas Townsend and Christopher Glenn were familiar voices on CBS News Radio. But radio, like other legacy media, has struggled in the digital age, as consumers shift online for 24/7 news and entertainment, according to The Chicago Tribune.
“This is another part of the landscape that has fallen off into the sea,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade publication for radio talk shows. “It’s a shame. It’s a loss for the country and for the industry.”
The shutdown reflects broader changes in how audiences consume news. Once a dominant medium from the 1920s through the 1940s — when listeners gathered for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” — radio was overtaken by television in the 1950s and has since been further displaced by digital platforms and podcasts.
CBS no longer owns the radio stations — it sold them back in 2017 — but the unit regularly produced content for the CBS radio affiliates. 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.
Despite its decline, CBS News Radio played a significant role in broadcast history. It predates the CBS television network and helped launch the career of William S. Paley. The service rose to prominence during World War II, particularly through Edward R. Murrow’s influential reports from London.
The decision also comes amid ongoing changes within CBS News leadership. Weiss, who joined the network without prior broadcast experience after founding The Free Press, has drawn attention for her direction of the division. Shortly after taking the role, she warned staff the network would be “toast” if it stayed on its current path and pushed for content that would “surprise and provoke.”
Her tenure has also faced scrutiny, including criticism over delaying a “60 Minutes” segment about former President Donald Trump’s deportation policy, raising questions among some observers about the network’s editorial direction.