CBS Radio News Closure is No Surprise

© 2026, Joseph W. Webb, Ph.D.; originally published in SPERDVAC Radiogram, May-June 2026 edition

NOTE: This article appeared in SPERDVAC Radiogram but did not include the images that were submitted to the publication. They were likely eliminated for space considerations. The following is the article as originally submitted to the publication.

The news communications business is dynamic, always changing, with control shifting from the few powerful leaders of decades ago to a scattered and wide range of participants. It will keep changing, with more ways than ever for listeners and viewers to access content. Whether it’s newspapers, radio, news shorts (like Movietone News) in movie theaters, television, websites, video services, or the current success of podcasts, they all impinged on the earlier successes of media that came before them.

At the end of March, 2026, it was announced that CBS Radio News would close about two months later. Today’s listeners largely shrugged off the news, with CBS just one among many listening alternatives. For classic radio enthusiasts aware of the history, it was another sign of the changes in media that erase ties to an important history. Paradoxically, many of us read and heard about it… on the Internet… and on our smartphones… from a news sources developed long after the CBS Radio News heyday.

Classic Radio Enthusiasts Appreciate the History

CBS Radio News was a dominant presence during radio’s golden age. It was less than 15 years old when World War II began. Its enduring positive reputation was built largely on its international news coverage at that time. Edward R. Murrow and “Murrow’s Boys” were highly regarded journalists and reporter for many years afterward. The newspaper business was also thriving, with many households subscribing to more than one paper. Most cities, even some considered to be small markets today, had a morning newspaper and an evening one, and sometimes multiple of each.

When radio news emerged in the 1920s, many newspaper publishers were aghast. They did their best to compel regulators to thwart the inroads that fledgling broadcasters might make into their business. After several years, they realized that resisting radio was a mistake. Investing in them might be more lucrative than owning a paper. Cash-rich newspapers and their wealthy owners poured money into the new broadcasting businesses and technologies. The Chicago Tribune launched WGN, which stood for “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” WTMJ in Milwaukee originated from The Milwaukee Journal. WTAG in Worcester, Massachusetts could use all four letters, Worcester Telegram and Gazette. In later years, newspaper companies like Scripps and Cox would make major investments in television and cable. Television news eventually made evening newspapers obsolete. Through the 1940s and 1950s, the average household still subscribed to multiple papers, but the evening ones were the first to go as television came into more homes.

Radio was already popular in the 1920s and 1930s, but World War II created an even greater reliance on it. The immediacy of radio news was key, something that newspapers struggled to match. Editors and publishers compensated by offering more detail and analysis of events than radio could. Radio was immediate; newspapers could be thoughtful. Listeners were glued to their speakers as they heard about events on radio first, as reporters told them about unfolding events.

CBS was one of the radio behemoths, with a strong network of affiliates across the country, and reporters around the world. CBS and the other networks were creating and developing techniques and reporting formats as they were going along. Many of the reporters started their careers in newspapers, giving them a good discipline for reporting, investigating and verifying details, finding people and influencers to provide context about events. With those facts, many developed an authoritative and independent voice and urgency for the stories they covered.

Such infrastructure -- equipment, communications, and people -- did not come cheaply. The mere size of the investment was a deterrent to new network competitors. Very few organizations could foresee and plan the massive capital investments in broadcast infrastructure, a web of land lines of phone and proprietary technologies, transmitters and receivers that were required to deliver audio messages and images to audiences. A network of local, regional, national, and international entrepreneurs were drawn to the industry, latching their stations and operations to the network broadcasters. The system was built and succeeded. Over time, new technologies, new markets, and competitors with new ideas, created cracks in that infrastructure. Competitors to the CBS Radio News of today had operations and obligations that needed to be maintained and were hard to unwind. New competitors started fresh, without such burdens, and taking advantage of the constantly declining costs of computers and communications technologies.

New Technologies Change Industries and Listener Patterns

Today’s communications technologies transformed the way information is developed and delivered. A key development for the entire industry was satellite communications, with its benefits of reliable communications in some of the world’s most difficult places. This made specialty news networks, and programs like ESPN SportsCenter, able to have quick access to film or audio with a speed and quality they did not always have. Years before, they had to wait to receive films via courier. Those new capabilities and flexibilities expanded even more with the rise of the Internet.

When industries change, many of the older established enterprises have difficulty surviving. It is often their distribution methods that prevent them from adapting to new industry structures. It was the CBS Radio News infrastructure that actually got in the way of adapting to the future marketplaces of the 1980s, 1990s, and Twenty-first Century. Sometimes that infrastructure is a legal one. They had contractual obligations to their affiliates, and vice versa. Older organizations have trouble investing in new ventures because they threaten and compromise their existing businesses. They’re caught in a trap of their own making.

Consider retail: Sears was a master retailer with offerings in numerous product categories with convenient stores and their famous catalogs. Why couldn’t they become Amazon? All of Sears’ internal operations were driven by the maintaining buildings and bureaucracies that reflected their business processes of the past. Amazon outmaneuvered them with wider inventories and quicker shipping, and a quick and easy shopping experience. Sears still had all those fixed costs and their computing systems were for internal efficiency, not for customer engagement. There are so many examples, such as Blockbuster being driven out of business by Netflix, and Netflix itself getting involved in projects that movie studios and television networks used to do. How could Sony let its Walkman business be beaten so resoundingly by the Apple iPod? How could Nokia, the leader in mobile technologies, who could produce a phone with the same exact functionality as an Apple iPhone, be trampled by a computer company that had no history or experience in the telecommunications business?

Not as Invincible as They Thought

CBS Radio News was part of the mid-1900s information-delivery build-out. Broadcasters thought their enterprises were sturdy and secure. If there were any threats to their positions, they would just buy those new technologies and organizations and make them part of the company. They believed they could delay competition by using industry regulations and practices against new competitors.

Meanwhile, radio itself was changing in its consumption patterns, and legacy news organizations faced declining credibility.

The shift in media preferences is reflected in the employment data of the industry. Radio employment was declining while other media were coming to the marketplace and luring the radio audience. The chart from Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows employment on an index basis where 1998=100. (I picked that year because it is about the time Google was started). Overall US employment is up by 25% since 1998. Radio broadcasting employment, however, is down by 45%. That’s an incredible spread of 70 percentage points. It happened gradually over those nearly 30 years.

Changes in media habits and trust in them are also an important factor in the closure of CBS Radio News. The Pew Research organization studies media use on a regular basis. Their latest study was conducted in August 2025. The chart shows the percentages of consumers who rely on various media for their news. It shows the preferred choice of consumers when they want to get news and where they will go. This means it’s not hearing news on a passive basis where radio might be playing in the background and the news happens to come on. This is where they go when they seek news. These are selected data by education and age. Note how media preferences differ by age for each of the media.

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/

The first choice is television, by 34% of adults, but among those 18-29 it is only 12% and for 30-49 it is 23%. TV is highest for those 65 years and older. The directional shift in overall adult media preference in news delivery is quite clear. The chart shows radio is at 7% for college-educated consumers. That group is important to advertisers because they are the highest income households.

There is also a trust factor for mainstream news. A 1972 Gallup survey indicated that mass media was trusted by 70% of the general public. One can only imagine what the number was during World War II and with CBS Radio News. There’s a very good chance it was above 90%. In recent years, however, the Gallup survey now has the combination of “not very much” trust and “none at all” with a combined score of 70%. Some of that decline is the effect that there are more news competitors. Gallup’s survey in 1972 was eight years before Cable News Network (CNN) and the many similar “non-mass media” news outlets that followed it in subsequent years. People might not like “mass media,” but they eventually found preferred news resources that they trusted more.

Some of those news organizations took advantage of other distribution channels. One of the key changes in listening habits has been the growing acceptance of listening to TV audio without watching screens. Listeners of satellite radio have already been doing so in their cars for decades as audio of CNN and Fox News and others are accessed by their consumers.

Radio dominates in-car listening, unmatched by any of the other media. It will erode as more and more smartphone streaming seeps into the driving experience. It is already common for millions of drivers to use their Pandora and Spotify subscriptions for music and podcasts, usually commercial-free, in their cars. They connect their devices to the car audio system using Bluetooth. Radio’s strongest grip was anchored by rush hour traffic and weather reports. Both of those have very strong competitors. Smartphones provide access to detailed forecasts and even radar images. Navigation apps provide not just directions, but the latest traffic conditions and propose alternative routes if needed.

Podcasts are gaining traction among college-educated news seekers and listeners under 50 years old. They allow time-shifted news listening where the listener has full control over their media engagement. Major broadcast networks, for example, now make their evening news TV broadcasts available on YouTube and other platforms within a short time after broadcast.

What Did CBS Radio Squander?

It is easy to lament the closure of CBS Radio, and how it was a gold standard for broadcast journalism, especially in World War II. That was more than 80 years ago. A more important question is how an organization with the smartest reporters with the best journalistic support, best access to news-making decision-makers, the latest and most detailed audience data, and the best financed production operations could not adapt to marketplace changes, or even lead them. Why didn’t they become leaders in podcasting, social media, news websites, and other new media? Shame on them. Their myopic bad decisions and the deep-rooted assumption that they could stay above it all led to the squandering of a respected and mighty franchise. Now the “new guard” at CBS News has to pick up the best pieces that are left as they navigate walking on and around the legacy rubble. Wish them well.

As classic radio enthusiasts and preservationists, what do we do?

Now that CBS itself has been swallowed into new media conglomerates, and CBS Radio News is gone, whatever re-organized entity will likely have little incentive to preserve their history beyond what has been done already. SPERDVAC and independent collectors, however, have much to offer.

The Old Time Radio Researchers (OTRR) has transferred many collections of radio news from reel tapes that collectors gathered over the decades. These included transfers of discs of news programs of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. They are in much better sound quality than what was in circulation for many years. These are being made available in various places, The Internet Archive, and eventually SPERDVAC.

Few collectors have interest in news programs, but one who did was the late Mike Harron (1945-2025). He was one of the volunteers transferring the tapes, but he had a side project that was what got him interested in the hobby. Born in the UK shortly after World War II, he had great interest in the news programs of that period. He desired to assemble a collection of daily radio that integrated the news of a particular date and combine them with whatever radio comedies, dramas, variety, and other programs were also broadcast that same day. The World War II news was often commented on in the entertainment programs of that era in dramatic situations or comments by hosts and comedians. The Harron family has supplied OTRR with his collection of this format, and these will soon be made available to all. We greatly appreciate their assistance in making this possible.

As hobbyists and preservationists, we need to cultivate greater interest in the news recordings of the past. As we started converting reels of news programs into digital files, Mike Harron was our only news “expert” willing to take up the task. Since he passed away last year, we are still looking for volunteers to continue his efforts to build the wartime news broadcast library and upgrade its sound quality in the process. Adoration of radio’s golden age often neglects the importance of news organizations in keeping people listening during one of the most difficult times of our history. The 2026 CBS Radio News may disappear this year, but its golden age endeavors remain… if we preserve them.

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