Another Friday, another media institution bites the dust. This is getting to be a habit, and not in a good way.
This time around the imminently deceased had reached a ripe old age but was nonetheless lamented as a premature death by what seemed like thousands of my collective social media followers in a matter of hours yesterday. This is how the victim reported on its own demise:
CBS News announced Friday that CBS News Radio will be shutting down this spring after nearly 100 years of broadcasting. The company cited “challenging economic realities” and a shift in radio programming strategies as reasons behind the decision. About 700 affiliated stations nationwide carry CBS News Radio programming, which will end on May 22. All jobs on the radio team will be eliminated, the company said. “We understand how difficult this news is for our staff and their colleagues, who have worked side by side with us to cover some of the most significant stories of our time,” CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss said in a statement.
It is the noxious and divisive Weiss–whom we have adoringly monickered as”Barium Enema”– that took the brunt of the consternation and blame for this, and given that her current pet project, THE CBS EVENING NEWS WITH TONY DOUKOPIL, has in a matter of a less than two months dipped to viewing levels even below those of that which his ill-fated predecessors John Dickerson and Maurice Dubois delivered , she’s low and disdained enough hanging fruit to target with vitriol. THE LOS ANGELES TIMES’ Stephen Battaglio cited this example:
The cuts drew a harsh response from the Writers Guild of America, which is currently involved in negotiations for a new contract with CBS News. “CBS News Radio is an institution, where generations of the finest journalists in the country spent their careers reporting the news and holding people in power to account,” the union said in a statement. “The decision to simply shutter CBS News Radio is indicative of Bari Weiss and (Paramount Chief Executive) David Ellison’s inept leadership.”
And the ASSOCIATED PRESS’ David Bauder added this observation:
Said longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather: “It’s another piece of America that is gone.” “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.
Ah, but there’s the rub. It’s folks in the range of Rather’s age that can best relate to the names and institutions that Cibrowski and Weiss cited in their word salad eulogy:
“For nearly 100 years, CBS News Radio has delivered original reporting to the nation — from Edward R. Murrow’s World War II reports in London to today’s daily White House updates,” they said. “Our signature broadcast, ‘World News Roundup,’ remains the longest-running newscast in the country. CBS News Radio served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927.”
Or those that the veteran Battaglio dredged up from his own memory banks:
“World News Roundup” rose to prominence during World War II, when Murrow and other CBS News correspondents delivered live reports from Europe. Robert Trout led the broadcast when it was launched and is considered by historians to be the first news anchor. Douglas Edwards, another esteemed veteran of CBS News, was at the microphone for the program from 1966 to 1988 when it was called “The World Tonight.
Look, I’m one of those people myself. You might recall I bawled more than a little when the one-time flagship station of CBS RADIO NEWS, New York’s WCBS Newsradio 88, became history at the end of summer 2024. And that was even before The Enema Within became the face of further institutional destruction, ostensibly knee-bending and fellating (obvs figuratively) to the whims and whimsies of the current administration.
But amidst the wails and laments I read yesterday a few indisputable facts slipped through the cracks. For one, it was noted that while CBS RADIO NEWS was not losing money–not a small feat within a company about to take on $79 billion of debt–its monthly reach had slipped -23% over this decade. And even though radio as a medium still has one of the widest reaches of any communications or advertising medium the audience and content has moved farther and farther away from live national news in English. As what is technically considered terrestrial radio moves toward being heard via apps on digital devices and automotive OEM entertainment centers less time-sensitive content adaptable to podcasts are becoming far greater contributors to that total, and in survey after survey regarding local news the most consistently cited drivers for engagement are “traffic and weather together”. And once someone discovers that more detailed information is available quicker via the weather and Wayz apps that appear as adjacent tiles on their CarPlay displays any desire to wait through even a ten-minute cycle tends to disappear.
So IMO Bari Weiss at least in this case isn’t to blame as much as Father Time. And if you’re really looking for a Weiss to get enraged about, witness what her younger sister Suzy contributed to their FREE PRESS website yesterday:
One of the many reasons I love The Free Press is because I don’t much like the news. Let me explain: I hate when I’m scrolling on Instagram and I’m hit with an infographic, or admonished by a secondhand clothing influencer that it’s very important I pay attention right now. I don’t like how reading too many posts on X makes me feel; or how the lowdown on current events is often accompanied by instructions on how to feel about them, or else screaming heads tell me that whatever is happening is surely a precursor to the end of democracy—or the world. In an algorithmic age, staying informed can come at the cost of sanity. Which is why I love reading our essays and updates, which are sober and to the point, and come straight to my inbox, so I can go about my day. But there’s a tribe of people, let’s call them the News Avoiders, who don’t want to read the news at all. They’re recovering news junkies—their words—and they spoke to me about why they’re dropping out from the 24-hour news cycle.
L’il Suzy tellingly hid those details behind a paywall, so it’s up to you if you want to bother with the details. But I had already seen enough from more affordable sources to grudgingly concede her experience is more representative of her generation that we more seasoned folks might otherwise desire to admit.
Indeed, I’m sad that the chirps and pings that I could easily imitate will be disappearing, and still more good people are going to be competing with the likes of Suzy Weiss for Substack attention (let alone moi.). But I’m not gonna call out her Big Sis for being the reason this is coming to pass. Trust me, they”ll be much more to lay at her feet soon enough.
Until next time…