CBS News Radio: Final Broadcast – Or Fatal Mistake?
By Kevin Gershan, exclusively for RAMP.
“On May 22, CBS News Radio will go silent after nearly a century, ending not just a broadcast, but a voice that has carried the truth across generations.
CBS News Radio matters because it helped invent the language of modern broadcasting, and it did so through the voices that defined trust itself — Edward R. Murrow, William S. Paley, Frank Stanton, and Don Hewitt. Murrow’s wartime broadcasts didn’t just report history, they shaped how it was heard and understood. Figures like Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, and Charles Collingwood carried that standard forward, building a culture where credibility wasn’t optional, it was the product. And with CBS World News Roundup — the longest-running network news broadcast in history and the first regularly scheduled, coast-to-coast radio news program, CBS didn’t just cover the world — it created the template for how the world would be heard.
Even in a revenue-neutral scenario, CBS News Radio is worth preserving because it represents infrastructure shaped by generations of broadcasters who understood its civic role, people like Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, and Bob Schieffer. This isn’t just a collection of stations; it’s a living system that has proven its value in moments when other systems fail. Radio’s ability to cut through chaos, no passwords, no buffering, no dependency on fragile infrastructure, has been reinforced time and again. The trust built by these voices is cumulative, and once lost, it cannot simply be reassembled with new platforms or newer tech.
And it still has value today, carried forward by modern figures like Scott Pelley, Norah O’Donnell, Gayle King, and Anthony Mason, while the DNA of CBS News Radio continues to influence the broader audio landscape. The resurgence of audio: podcasts, streaming, and in-car listening, is essentially a rediscovery of what CBS perfected decades ago. Its local stations and personalities still provide something deeply human and immediate, something algorithm-driven platforms struggle to replicate.
Preserving CBS New Radio isn’t about nostalgia — it’s about protecting a continuum of trust, craft, and connection that remains as relevant now as it was when Murrow first signed on. Because when the noise fades and the signal matters most, it is the steady voice in the dark — first heard on CBS News Radio — that reminds us not just what happened, but that someone was there to bear witness.”
• Kevin Gershan is the former Producer/Director of Entertainment Tonight and Director of Creative Music Strategy for CBS Media Ventures. He also oversaw all the interstitial radio content for CBS Media Ventures, including the ET Radio Minute, Inside Edition: Inside Report, Ask Dr. Phil, The Doctors Orders and Rach On The Radio.
