CBS Radio News Cancelled

Years pass by. From World War II, the Korea War, Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the JKF Assassination, the Watts Riots, Vietnam demonstrations, Watergate, the Berlin Wall, the Iran hostage crisis, 9-11, the pandemic and much more, all have been covered by America’s oldest and possibly best-known radio news service, CBS Radio News.

Now, with one hastily assembled docusigned notice, almost one hundred years of journalism was given the heave-ho. It happened on Friday, March 20, when CBS radio notified around 700 subscribing radio stations that CBS Radio News would officially shut down on May 22.

Evidence of the hastily assembled part was the date of the letter of termination: March 20, 2025.

Before the start of CBS Radio News, there was essentially no such animal. CBS News Radio traces its roots to 1927, just under a hundred years of unbroken service, of feeding local affiliates network-quality reporting that small and mid-size stations could never produce on their own. Its flagship program, “World News Roundup,” is the longest-running newscast in American history.

In the mid-1930s, Edward R. Murrow was brought in to create a news service. At the start of World War II, on September 1940, Morrow began his influential “This Is London” broadcasts during the London Blitz by the Nazi air force reporting live from the roof of the BBC building. These broadcasts, along with Pearl Harbor, helped to begin the U.S. involvement in this so-called “foreign war.”

Some of today’s issues are echoes of earlier stories: Iran, Cuba and even Murrow’s 1950’s foe, congressional red baiter Joe McCarthy whose attorney, Roy Cohn, who was influential in shaping Donald Trump’s legal strategies long after Murrow and McCarthy were long gone. Now to some, the CBS decision to cancel radio news has to do with Trump stifling media opposition to his agenda.

Said one-time local television and radio personality Steve Edwards, “CBS News Radio wasn’t just content. It was consistency. It was the sound of authority in the middle of chaos. When that voice came on, you believed it. And in today’s world, belief is a rare commodity.”

CBS News Radio was a major force for generations of Americans. “Its heyday spanned decades,” Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers 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.”

Locally, KNX radio, considered L.A.’s earliest station, was bought by CBS in 1936. As of 1984, the FCC discontinued its 7-7-7 rule that no broadcast entity could own more than seven AM, seven FM and seven TV stations. As a result, new startups, some poorly financed, began adding stations to their rosters. In 2017, CBS sold its entire inventory of radio stations, including KNX and their FM counterpart, KCBS-FM, known as JACK-FM.

Apart from these changes, CBS as a network has undergone several touch-an-go ownership changes, finally ending up in the corporate hands of Larry Ellison’s Paramount, an entity aligned with Donald Trump, who has sued CBS for a “60 Minutes” interview. Now there is one less outlet reporting on Trump. 

"While this was a necessary decision, it was not an easy one," news editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and CBS president Tom Cibrowski said. "Parts of our newsroom must get smaller to make room for the things we must build to remain competitive."

The future of KNX as an all-news outlet has yet to be determined. Replacing CBS news would not be easy. As with CBS, competing networks NBC and ABC have also shed radio stations. I-Heart’s news talk radio KFI currently runs ABC “actualities” and Fox news, while NBC has licensed its ID to I-Heart, limiting opportunities for KNX to run a national newscast.