R.I.P., CBS Radio News

Musings of an Aging Mind

By Jack Bagley

A major announcement in a competing media field was made last week, and the word really made me upset.
On May 22, CBS Radio News will shut down, after almost 100 years of operation. The news operation that brought us Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather is going away because of “changes in listening habits and economic challenges.”
Most of you reading this already know that I have been in broadcasting for what will be 50 years in June. I’ve worked at three radio stations, none of which ever were CBS affiliates, at least while I was there. So any personal interaction with CBS Radio News has never actually happened; I have never interacted with Mr. Murrow, Mr. Cronkite, or Mr. Rather.
But I still have vivid, fond memories of CBS Radio News.  When I was a little boy in Chicago, some dear friends of our family would have it on every time we visited them.
They were friends of my mother’s family and, by extension, our friends too.  They were an elderly couple, whom my siblings and I called Uncle Fran and Aunt Mae, and they were probably the sweetest people I knew in that time frame.
Uncle Fran and Aunt Mae did not own a television set. They had an apartment in Chicago, and it was a veritable museum of the past, as I can remember. The newest item in it had to be something purchased in 1950 or so.
The place had a distinctive aroma, one of age, dust and good cooking. It was a pleasant smell that (as silly as it seems) I always looked forward to on our visits.
I mentioned that they had no television.  What they did have was a very large radio, one from the 1940s that was essentially a piece of furniture. And that radio was tuned – and locked, I presume – to WBBM-AM, the Chicago home of CBS Radio. Uncle Fran said that that network had the best news coverage and he enjoyed listening to the national news at the top of the hour.
I can recall how he would wave for quiet when the unique news tone played, followed by the voice of Cronkite, Rather, Douglas Edwards, or whoever was on radio duty that hour.
After the national news, when the Chicago local news would come on (usually voiced by local legend Fahey Flynn), we could go back to whatever we were doing.
You could say Uncle Fran and Aunt Mae lived and died by CBS Radio News. They seldom went out of their apartment (I don’t think Aunt Mae could walk very well) and the radio was their lifeline to the outside world.
And now, that lifeline is going away.
The announcement by CBS News head Bari Weiss about “changing radio listening habits” can, I believe, be blamed on one factor. The change in radio listening habits can be laid at the feet of one company.
Clear Channel, or as it’s now called, I Heart Radio.
Until 1996, the Federal Communications Commission prohibited companies from owning more than one AM and one FM radio station in any market (except the largest, where they could own two). But that year, they passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which basically deregulated commercial radio. A company out of San Antonio, Texas, called Clear Channel, began buying stations at an alarming rate, and at its peak in the 2010s the company owned more than 1200 radio stations across the country.
That expansion (they only own about 870 stations today) signaled the death of local radio.
Their various formats are all controlled from a central studio with announcers who can sound local but have no connection to the community.  Local news is pushed back or eliminated in an effort to sell toothpaste, or whatever products the advertisers (the real stars of the show) are trying to push. While it might make business sense, it doesn’t make broadcasting sense, and listeners began looking for alternatives.
Fortunately, today’s technology gives them just that.
But to paraphrase an old saying, technology giveth, and technology taketh away.  While you and I have many, many more choices for our listening entertainment than radio, we lose something as well – we lose the local touch, we lose that connection with our community.
And I say that as a 50-year veteran of local broadcasting.
Which brings me back to to CBS Radio News, a service that has brought world events to you for almost 100 years.
Now, thanks to economics and that shift in listener habits, it’s going away.
Thanks, CBS, for a century of news coverage.  You will be missed.