By Holland Cooke
Consultant
Although I don’t have a machine to play it, I have saved the cart. December 9, 1980, the sad morning-after John Lennon died, Charles Osgood, doleful: “I read the news today. Oh boy.” That morning’s CBS World News Roundup – and on-hour newscasts throughout that day – delivered more moments that would keep you sitting in a parked car at your destination. As they would 3 months later when President Reagan was shot. Then soon again when Pope John Paul II was severely wounded in St. Peter’s Square. And five years yonder, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds into its flight.
There have been countless other such moments we emotionally bookmark. But it is the dependable day-in-day-out certainty of its on-hour newscast – what we programmers call “a benchmark” – that we will miss most after Friday, when CBS News Radio ends. Among the stories they will cover that day: Stephen Colbert’s CBS “Late Show” finale the night before.
The CBS Radio Network would have turned 100 next year. It sent home the sounds of war, live from a rooftop: “This… is London,” reported by Edward R. Murrow, whose name adorns the news award broadcasters still strive for. His trademark sign-off “Good Night and Good Luck” titled a 2005 biopic directed by George Clooney, who starred in last year’s ambitious Broadway production (available on Netflix). The New York Times: “Clooney makes Edward R. Murrow a saint of sane journalism for a world that still needs one.”
“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it,” is the CBS corporate spin. But neither supply nor demand failed. What failed is the supply chain, 1996 deregulation run-amok. And news/talk stations have borne the brunt of it. Depopulated of local talent and starved for promotion and other resources allocated to co-owned music stations now losing to streaming, too many talk stations became angry, non-local, one-sided political caricatures, too predictable to seem vital. Other stations, with diligent owners hellbent on Doing It Right, are all-the-more conspicuous. They will continue to succeed, even without precious CBS assets. But those stations are anomalies, now outnumbered by others in unattended operation mode, some of which could end up broadcasting dead air on-hour Saturday morning.
Holland Cooke (HollandCooke.com) is a consultant working the intersection of broadcasting and the Internet. Follow HC on Twitter @HollandCooke and connect on LinkedIn