CBS News shutters its storied radio news service after nearly a century,
ending an era
[March 21, 2026]
By DAVID BAUDER
NEW YORK (AP) — CBS News said Friday it will shut down its storied radio
news service after nearly 100 years of operation, ending an era and
blaming challenging economic times as the world moves on to digital
sources and podcasts. Said longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather: “It’s
another piece of America that is gone."
When it went on the air in September 1927, the service was the precursor
to the entire network, giving a youthful William S. Paley a start in the
business. Famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's rooftop reports during
the Nazi bombing of London during World War II kept Americans listening
anxiously.
Today, CBS News Radio provides material to an estimated 700 stations
across the country and is known best for its top-of-the-hour news
roundups. The service will end on May 22, the network said Friday.
“Radio is woven into the fabric of CBS News and that's always going to
be part of our history,” CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said in
delivering the news to the staff. “I want you to know that we did
everything we could, including before I joined the company, to try and
find a viable solution to sustain the radio operation.”
But with the radical changes in the media industry, she said, “we just
could not find a way to make that possible."
Not the first radio cuts at CBS
CBS News cut some of its radio programming late last year, including its
“Weekend Roundup” and “World News Roundup Late Edition,” in an attempt
to keep the service going.
It was unclear how many people will lose their jobs because of the radio
shutdown. CBS News was cutting about 6% of its workforce, or more than
60 people, on Friday. It's not the end of turmoil at the network, as
parent company Paramount Global is likely to absorb CNN as part of its
announced purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.
“Given the way things are going, I was saddened but I wasn't surprised
by it,” said Rather, who succeeded network legend Walter Cronkite in
1981 and anchored for 25 years.
When Rather covered the civil rights era for CBS News during the 1960s,
he said he would file reports as frequently as a dozen times a day.
Cronkite told America on television that President John F. Kennedy had
been assassinated; Rather relayed the news for radio.
“Radio was considered an equal responsibility to television,” Rather,
now 94, said in an interview.
Along with newspapers, radio was the dominant medium in how Americans
got their news from shortly after the dawn of commercial radio in 1920
through the 1940s, with people in their living rooms listening to
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's “Fireside Chats” during the
Depression. CBS News Radio's broadcast about Germany's invasion of
Austria in 1938, the first time Murrow was heard on the air, was an
historic marker for the service.
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The CBS Broadcast Center on 57th Street in New York on April 20,
2023. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)
 Broadcasters like Douglas Edwards,
Dallas Townsend and Christopher Glenn were familiar voices on CBS
News Radio. The beginning of the television era in the 1950s began a
long slide for radio, often an afterthought today with the world
online and on phones. Those seeking audio often turn to podcasts
before radio.
“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.”
A major radio player for many decades
CBS News Radio was a major force for generations of Americans. “Its
heyday spanned decades,” Harrison said. “It was quality on every
level. It sounded good. Its coverage was as objective as possible
within the realm of human nature. Its resources were extensive. It
had a very high trust factor that was considered the standard of the
day.”
The front page of CBS News' website did not immediately carry news
of the demise.
Weiss, founder of the Free Press website and without broadcast news
experience before being hired by CBS parent Paramount’s new
management, has quickly become a headline-maker and polarizing
figure in journalism. She held a “60 Minutes” story critical of
President Donald Trump’s deportation policy from being broadcast for
a month and has critics watching to see if she’s moving the network
in a Trump-friendly direction.
Addressing her staff in January, three months into her job as CBS
News boss, she invoked Cronkite's name as a symbol of old thinking
and said that if the network continues with its current strategy,
“we’re toast.” She announced the hiring of 18 new contributors and
said CBS News needs to do stories that will “surprise and provoke —
including inside our own newsroom.”
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