Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

A great radio station is dead, a victim of the ever-changing world of major media. WCBS Newsradio 880, a fixture in New York City for nearly six decades, has said farewell to its loyal listeners, me included. The shutdown on August 26, 2024, of the iconic all-news station marks the end of an era in local news broadcasting.

WCBS was not the first radio station to try the all-news format. It wasn’t even the first station in New York to go the all-news route. But of all the stations in that group, and I’ve heard dozens over the years, WCBS did it best.

I first discovered WCBS in the fall of 1969 when I came to the New York area for college. The station had switched to all news in August 1967. I was already a listener to its Chicago sister station, WBBM Newsradio 780, which had adopted the all-news format in 1968.

WCBS quickly became my go-to station for news and information. I usually began my morning with the World News Roundup from CBS Radio News. Charles Osgood, one of the morning anchors, was a favorite of mine. I still remember listening to the station’s coverage of the power blackout on February 6, 1971. I continued to listen as I attended graduate school in Manhattan. One of my professors, William Wood, had a weekly feature on WCBS called “William Wood On the Press.” He took me over the CBS building known as “Black Rock” a few times when he went to record, and I got to see the studios and meet some of the crew. I also interned there for one week during the holiday vacation.

WCBS 880 has been home to other legendary journalists who shaped the station’s legacy. Ed Bradley, Charles Kuralt, Rich Lamb, Wayne Cabot, Steve Scott, Michale Wallace, and Deborah Rodriguez are just a few of the names etched into its history. Their voices resonated across the airwaves, informing and connecting with listeners.

The one-time flagship of the Columbia Broadcasting System can trace its history to 1927, and a company called United Independent Broadcasters. By 1928, the company had adopted the CBS name, and the majority owner was William S. Paley. WCBS radio changed its format over and over again, but Paley was particularly involved with the all-news conversion in 1967. And the boss was very proud of this station.

The corporate sage of CBS in the post Paley era has filled several books. CBS has been bought and sold, organized and reorganized time and time again. Its much larger corporate partners have included the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Viacom.

If you could recapture all the money spent on investment bankers and lawyers, you would be able to operate Newsradio 880 for decades.

And that is the problem. Just as readers and advertisers abandoned newspapers as sources of news and information, they are now abandoning radio and television. CBS sold its radio stations in 2017 to what was then known as Entercom and is now known as Audacy.

Audacy now owns 235 local radio stations across the United States, including WCBS and WBBM. It also owns 1010 WINS, the other all-news station in New York. I cannot understand why government regulators allowed a single entity to own so many of America’s broadcasting licenses. Or why they allowed a single entity to own both all-news stations in America’s largest market. Audacy is really focused on the podcasting form of distribution and has no idea how to deal with its traditional broadcasters. It is currently in bankruptcy court, having received permission for a Chapter 11 reorganization that will cancel much of its significant debt and place the remaining assets in the hands of its creditors.

Meanwhile its managers remain in control, and they made the decision to “retire” WCBS 880’s all-news format, and its historic call letters. They say retire. I say murder.

“New York has always been proudly unique in supporting two all-news radio brands, but the news business has gone through significant changes,” said Chris Oliviero, New York Market President, Audacy. “The headwinds facing local journalism nationwide made it essential to strategically reimagine how we deliver the news for the most impact. WCBS 880 has been one of the most respected radio stations in history, with a legacy cemented by the hundreds of world-class journalists, on and off the air, who willed it into existence over the decades. If it happened in New York or the world, you heard about it on WCBS 880.”

A nice sentiment. But it does nothing to hide the facts. If Audacy knew its business, this may not have happened. As it approached its demise, WCBS was one of the ten highest billing stations in the United States. Yes, newsradio is labor intensive and therefore a costly format to do. Cost cutting had reduced the WCBS staff over the years. But Audacy’s problem was not so much profit return as it was Audacy’s need to service the monstrous debt load it took on to amass its station group. That’s bad planning. And bad management. I dream that the bankruptcy court judge and the FCC will reject the closing of WCBS and force its sale to someone willing to restore it to operation. But I realize that’s just a fantasy.

Industry analyst Kipper McGee summed it up, “The shortcomings of radio in this era of consolidation are many. Local flavor has given way to homogenized content, community engagement has been replaced by automated playlists, and innovation is stifled by corporate mandates focused solely on short-term profits. Radio has forgotten that it’s not just about broadcasting; it’s about connecting.

“If radio keeps going down this path and fails to evolve, it won’t be because listeners stopped tuning in, but because we stopped giving them something worth tuning in for. The final budget cut will be the outrageous electric bill, and the only sound left will be static. And as that canary in the coal mine falls silent, you can almost imagine it joining William Paley at that great AM station in the sky—where the airwaves are clear, the content is king, and radio still matters.”

As WCBS 880 signs off, its sister station, 1010 WINS@92.3FM, will continue as New York’s only 24/7 all-news station. It will not be the same. WCBS employees, members of the family to many listeners, are now out of work and silent. The expert voices and international coverage of CBS Radio News will no longer have a broadcast outlet in what is known as the “Tri-State” area. I wonder how much longer it will continue. Both NBC and ABC abandoned their radio news operations long ago.

During my career I spent a decade working for CBS at WBBM-TV, the company’s station in Chicago. Responsible for political coverage and opinion polling for a time, I was occasionally invited “upstairs” to guest on WBBM Newsradio. At that time, I was a member of the union which represented newswriters, the Writer’s Guide of America, East, from which I retired when I entered management.

WGAE represented 23 members of the WCBS staff, and it put out a statement saying it is “devastated” by Audacy’s decision, “The closure of WCBS Newsradio 880 is another example of consolidation by a major media conglomerate, which ultimately deprives the public of critical local news stories with different perspectives,” the union’s statement said. “Audacy’s decision is even more egregious given that this is a critical election year. This is a giant loss for New York City and the news industry at large.”

But more than anything it is a loss for the public, at least those of us who still value information delivered in a clear and unbiased manner. Unfortunately, most of us are, these days, consuming information that is “siloed”, coming from sources that transmit material with a bias we are already predisposed to hear. Nothing different. Nothing new. Nothing challenging. Just reinforcement for our increasingly polarized society.

Audacy will retire the WCBS call letters and lease the 880 frequency to ESPN, which will program sports. In a world where poor baseball players earn millions, but our children’s teachers make $70,000, why am I not surprised?