Good Night and Good Luck

Let me start with some sound...

In the radio business, that is known as a "sounder." Like the NBC 3-chime intro...

...it is used to identify network programming or news that is coming up. My first job in radio news 56 years ago was at the CBS affiliate in Houston, KTRH. I was a 20-year-old drama major still in college when I was carelessly hired as an anchor for the weekend news. The studios were in the beautiful old Rice Hotel in Houston, where JFK stayed the night before flying up to DFW in November of 1963.

And that old CBS radio news intro is burned into my brain. But it is soon to be no more.

The CBS Radio Network is 99 years old and until next month, one of the 3 major radio networks left.  From Wikipedia...

CBS Radio traces its roots to CBS's predecessor, United Independent Broadcasters, founded in 1927 with 47 network affiliates. Before United Independent Broadcasters went to air, Columbia Records invested in the radio network, which was renamed the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System. Eventually, the record company pulled its backing from the struggling web. William S. Paley bought a half-interest in what became the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928 and became its president. (In 1938, CBS bought its former parent, Columbia Records.)

William Paley, one of the legendary and far-sighted pioneers in American broadcasting. In 1935 he hired Edward R. Murrow, a young former speech major, whose birth name was Egbert. I know, good call on the name change.

There was no CBS News at the time, only one announcer named Robert Trout. Murrow was to line up prominent newsmakers for interviews. Trout, by the way, gave him tips on how to deliver news on the radio. Paley sent Murrow to Europe in 1937 to again, round up big-name guests for radio, but he still wasn't a reporter himself. That came as WWII began in Europe and Murrow ultimately started reporting from London during the Blitz.

Here is the power that was radio, and later television. When Murrow came home in 1941, a dinner was thrown in his honor. The Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, said this...

 "You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames that burned it," MacLeish said. "You laid the dead of London at our doors and we knew that the dead were our dead, were mankind's dead. You have destroyed the superstition that what is done beyond 3,000 miles of water is not really done at all."

Murrow assembled the team that became CBS News, commonly called in the industry, "Murrow's Boys." Whether in war or domestic controversies like the Red Scare or civil rights, they were the standard. One famous Murrow quote from his Joe McCarthy broadcast stands out...

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.”

That is the legacy of CBS News, and now the radio arm is soon to be gone. There are 700 affiliate stations across the country, like the one I worked for decades ago.

This is one by-product of the blood-letting going on at CBS parent company Paramount, since it was bought by prominent Trump supporter Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, who put his son David in charge of CBS. David hired an opinion columnist named Bari Weiss to head up the news division.

Bari has never run a newsroom, never been a reporter or anchor. She has been a conservative opinion writer, period. And that's absolutely fine as far as it goes. America benefits from a variety of opinions in the press or, frankly, anywhere. But now, little by little, she is dismantling much of what was CBS News, and the radio division will be gone entirely. This is happening in the name of fairness, which is in this case, very much in the eyes of the beholder.

And now, the administration is helping Ellison take over Warner Brothers, which owns CNN, so expect much the same at Ted Turner's 24-hour news pioneer. Were this takeover by, say, George Soros or any other liberal billionaire, and financed with huge amounts, $24-billion, of Saudi and Qatari money, the complaints, starting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, would be loud and long.

Well, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) is a major player in Ellison's deal, with reports indicating a significant portion of the $24 billion comes from them, alongside Qatar and Abu Dhabi, as discussed on Variety and reported by Business Insider.

The deal for both companies is heavily leveraged, as the saying goes, which means a lot of debt compared to value. That means, if history is any guide, huge budget cuts and in news, that means huge cuts in coverage of world events. Hey, that stuff is expensive, you know?

Add to this the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, and his pledge to make broadcasters more "patriotic." What does that mean? Well, we used to play the national anthem when the station signed off each night, but no one signs off anymore.

No, he means local stations taking action like the Jimmy Kimmel episode, to remove network programming they don't like. But the thing is, they did. That power is already there. So, the real problem is, firstly, his interpretation of the word "patriotic." Does that mean agreement on controversial issues? Would objective reporting on Viet Nam, for instance, be considered unpatriotic?

Secondly, he threatens regulatory punishment for those who refuse. Now, you're getting into First Amendment territory. Is this really where we are?

But let's be real. Any owner can do anything he wants, within certain limits, with a radio or TV station, and take any political stand he wants. Believe me, I've worked for a few. No, make that more than a few. But the media landscape is changing, and Bari Weiss is right about that.

If her Dad hadn't been on the radio or on local TV, my now 28-year-old daughter would never have tuned in. For her generation, listening to the radio or local TV news is like using an ice tray or a dial telephone.

For years now, local TV and radio audiences have been shrinking. When I started in 1970, even rock & roll stations had to carry newscasts. That rule went the way of the dodo years ago. Fairness Doctrine? Gone. Hello Rush Limbaugh. But technology is the real culprit.

Will my daughter get her news from TikTok? From Instagram? From YouTube? I don't generally have a high opinion of media consultants, feeling they are like the guy who knows 100 ways to make love and can't find a girl. But one session I attended did make an impression.

He was a TV consultant, and he told the gathered news directors that their real competition isn't the other stations. It's this...

So, yeah, the audience for CBS Radio News is aging out. But let's face it, in my hometown of Houston, when a storm is brewing in the Gulf of... you know what it's really called, and when it comes ashore and the internet goes out, you're going to wish my old radio station was there.

OK, one last Murrow quote. and I realize what a fanboy I'm coming off as. But this one is pretty prescient in the age of Trump.

“(His words) have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’"