CBS News Radio signs off Friday night after nearly 100 years of broadcasting: “An American institution”

CBS News Radio, which provides news programming to an estimated 700 stations spanning the United States, will sign off the air Friday night after nearly a century of broadcasting. 

The storied service, launched in September 1927, was home to broadcast legends Edward R. Murrow, Robert Trout, Douglas Edwards, Charles Osgood, Dan Rather and many other familiar and trusted voices over its decades in operation. 

“It’s been around for a long time. Really, an American institution is what we’re losing here,” said Steve Kathan, the longtime anchor of the CBS World News Roundup.

“CBS Radio should be remembered for becoming a national institution very important to the development of news other than newspapers,” Rather recently told “CBS Sunday Morning.” “It, for many, many years, was a part, and I would argue not a small part, of what held the country together.” 

The decision to shutter the radio news service was announced in March, with the company citing “challenging economic realities.” 

In a statement at the time, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss paid tribute to the historic role of CBS News Radio in covering major events worldwide since the dawn of the broadcasting era.

“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.” 

CBS News Radio first hit the airwaves just seven years after what’s been widely recognized as the first commercial radio broadcast.

The first broadcast of baseball’s World Series could be heard on CBS News Radio in 1938, and in 1939 it aired an interview with Babe Ruth.

CBS News Radio brought millions of Americans coverage of major events including the attack on Pearl Harbor and the D-Day invasion, Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the New York City blackout of 1977, the Gulf War, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Murrow’s voice was first heard on air in 1938. As “CBS Sunday Morning” recently recounted, he was in Europe to recruit voices for radio, but after observing how dangerous Hitler was, he sent back a broadcast.

“This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna. It’s now nearly 2:30 in the morning, and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived. No one seems to know just when he will get here. But most people expect him sometime after 10 o’clock tomorrow morning,” Murrow said in that report. 

He later provided rooftop reports in London during the Blitz and from the Buchenwald concentration camp after the Germans had fled.

“I’m not searching for adjectives to make this sound dramatic,” he said in one wartime report. “I’m just telling you what I’ve seen.”

The legendary broadcaster was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.

CBS program host and correspondent Allison Keyes covered the news from Lower Manhattan on 9/11. 

“People needed to know what was going on that day,” Keyes said, “in real time, no filter, no politics. Here’s what’s happening.”

As the final days of CBS News Radio approached, she and her coleagues reflected on its legacy. 

“It leaves a huge gap in the field of news,” Keys said. “I want the listeners to know how proud and honored I am to have worked for this amazing place, with these amazing people.”