In all of the discussions about CBS News Radio shutting down, I haven't heard anything about the status of radio broadcasts of TV programs such as Sunday Morning, Face The Nation, and Sixty Minutes. I'm a big fan of the Sixty Minutes radio broadcasts Sunday nights. Anyone heard what the status of those are? Thanks.
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Questions About CBS Radio Features
- Thread starter radiogirlsk
- Start date
Who would pay for it? It only makes sense to a company that already has relationships with stations that would air those shows. Syndicating those shows on a one-off basis isn't a viable business model. CBS News would want payment for the right to distribute their content. They don't just give it away for free.
If news stations want to use quotes from those shows, they can record them off air, and play :30 clips under fair use rules. That's how stations use other news shows they don't have rights to carry. It's possible that for one of the other remaining news networks to do the same thing. But it would be limited based on the fair use rules.
CBS News Radio had ocean front property. They had placement on 700 radio stations every hour for their branded content. They threw that away. That's their business decision. To me, it's very short sighted. But it's the decision they made. It puts them in a competitive disadvantage with ABC News.
There is the possibility the audio feed of ABC News tv programming might be made available to ABC News radio affiliates
Putting TV programs on the radio isn't great radio. It's cheap and lazy. CNN learned that with their radio version of Headline News. What stations want is for someone to provide highlights of the TV news shows so they don't have to watch them in their entirety. What I'm saying is the fair use rules allow that to happen.
Your question reminds me of how I felt when I learned that"NBC Monitor,", a music and news features program put together by the NBC radio network, was going away in February of 1975. I was an 11-year-old kid and had been listening to the program when we took camping trips to smalltown Arizona in 1973 and 1974. (Neither Phoenix' Nor Tucson's NBC affiliates ever carried the program). It was heartbreaking for me to learn that this program was going away and that I would most likely never hear it again. (This was before I learned about airchecks and long before the development of the Internet where I can now hear some of those old shows.) The full reality is that the CBS radio network shows are gone now, probably forever. Maybe someone will put airchecks of some episodes of these shows on the Internet (assuming CBS doesn't sue such people for copyright violations) but you will get over this loss. And, given Larry Ellison's and Bari Weiss' current tinkering with the television versions of these programs, especially "60 Minutes,", I'm not so sure that you would be happy with the end result even if it had stayed on radio.
Fortunately, public radio is still here and has shows that do the same kind of investigative reporting that "60 Minutes," was known for, even though the stations carrying this kind of programming are no longer receiving Federal funding, thanks to the man-child (thanks @AbrahamJ.Simpson for using that term in another thread) currently occupying the white House. What this Means (as @The BigA has pointed out in several other threads) is that we, the public, must fund our own public radio stations if we wish to continue to hear this kind of programming.
Fortunately, public radio is still here and has shows that do the same kind of investigative reporting that "60 Minutes," was known for, even though the stations carrying this kind of programming are no longer receiving Federal funding, thanks to the man-child (thanks @AbrahamJ.Simpson for using that term in another thread) currently occupying the white House. What this Means (as @The BigA has pointed out in several other threads) is that we, the public, must fund our own public radio stations if we wish to continue to hear this kind of programming.
NBC Monitor and the subsequent NBC News & Information service were attempts by NBC to find relevance for network radio at a time when stations were creating their own local content. The reason they failed is they couldn't get local stations to carry them, even stations owned by NBC. CBS could have started similar shows, but they too would have been failures because local stations weren't looking for that kind of long form network news programming.
But as you say there was an audience for this kind of programming. I read an interview with one of the founders of NPR's Morning Edition, who cited Monitor as an inspiration to what they were doing. Non-commercial stations were looking for programming from NPR, and this show was exactly what they wanted. So it became a huge hit. NPR is still alive and both CBS and NBC radio have gone away. Just because there's an audience for programming doesn't ensure that programming will be available. The fact that the audience pays for Morning Edition rather than advertisers is why it's still around today.
Many of the suggestions I have made for what radio could do get shot down because "the internet does that now" and indeed, 60 Minutes rebroadcasts appear to be readily available at 5/17/2026: Betting on War; The Knowledge; Christopher Nolan so the loss of the radio network for at least this feature is no loss. Same thing appears to be true for Face the Nation and CBS Sunday Morning. As long as one is willing to wait a couple of days, and has internet connectivity, long form audio content is there. NBC Meet the Press and ABC This Week full episodes are also available on the web.
Questioned elsewhere on this thread is "why would CBS make their programming available for free" to another radio entity? An answer could be that "they don't make it available for free," but allow week-old episodes to be sold (and supported by advertising) to an enterprising somebody who puts it on their radio station(s). CBS is out of the radio business, but they don't have to be out of the audio entertainment business. If I knew that WXXX radio was playing 60 Minutes on Saturday Night at 7PM, that could be an easier listen than firing up my computer and playing back an episode.
This all gets back to radio programming, and how I feel it is different than the internet. Content stacked up for a listener to play at will, like pulling a cassette out of the Columbia Record Club stack is one way to listen to music. Tuning in a radio station where the Program Director has done the work for me has been a lucrative business, and one I think could be done with all types of audio entertainment. I have heard the comments that people, especially younger demos, don't do appointment radio anymore. I might question what serious attempts at appointment radio, aside from Morning Shows (which we know work good) have been tried for younger demos?
Who would sell it? Who would represent those shows and market them to independent radio stations? For that, you need a distributor. CBS News Radio had a distributor with SkyView. They marketed the programming to stations and sold the spots to advertisers. They dropped CBS as a client last year, and Audacy picked up the contract. Six months later, CBS pulled out and shut down their network. Now those 700 affiliates have signed new contracts, mostly with ABC. So any potential outlet for CBS is now gone.
Once again, who would sell CBS News to radio? These things don't just happen. Someone has to push the rock up the hill.
Sure! However, the new distributor would start at zero. CBS didn't retain anything when it shut down the service. All the contracts were voided. Those 700 stations have all signed new affiliation deals that at minimum usually last 3 years. So that's likely how long a new distributor would have to wait in order to pitch stations on CBS News. How interested do you think stations would be to carry a network that dropped them for no reason?
Unless you're offering something I can't get elsewhere. Clearly that's not the case.
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Yes, I remember the CNN Headlines on the radio. "Look at him (basketball player) take that shot!"
My all time favorite CBS radio program was the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre. All 1,399 episodes are available to listen to at any time. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing. When the show ended in 1982, no one had access to this back then.
It depends. It's wonderful for you. It's bad for CBS or anyone connected to the shows.
Read the disclaimer:
All of that is fine and noble. Fortunately it's a non-commercial site, so nobody makes money. But this is why actors today are having wording put into their contracts that there be money set aside so they might be able to get some money from their work when they're retired and can't work anymore.
Its also why I warn people to be careful what you put on the internet, because it's there forever, and it's almost impossible to get it removed.
The other side of this is here is a potential revenue stream that CBS could have used to keep its radio division afloat. The goal of creating content is that it will have value beyond it's first listening. The people who appear in Friends continue to get paid every time the repeats are shown on TV. That's what you'd want to see happen for CBS Mystery Theater.
All of the episodes are also available on Spotify.
Not sure about the source of those. That obviously isn't a non profit organization.
I did a little digging and a lot of the episodes are marked "public domain." So it's possible that copyright has lapsed on them. I've noticed some radio companies aren't as attentive to copyright renewal as others.
I wonder if those programs could end up on C-SPAN radio? I can (just barely) receive WCSP from DC and for years would spend my Sunday afternoons listening to their rebroadcast of the Sunday morning roundtable shows. I haven't tuned in for some time, but they were running Fox News Sunday, Face the Nation, Meet The Press, ABC's This Week and Late Edition from CNN. I believe they repeated them again starting late that evening.
CBS News | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
CBS News - US - Listen to free internet radio, news, sports, music, audiobooks, and podcasts. Stream live CNN, FOX News Radio, and MS NOW. Plus 100,000 AM/FM radio stations featuring music, news, and local sports talk.
Tunein is airing some of the CBS content via podcasts they have with CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Evening News, Face the Nation and the TV Audio feed of CBS News. The only place to find it now is through podcast apps. But then again Audacy just got a contract with ABC news for their affiliates like KCBS, WCCO, KNX, WBBM. The best I can think of is that Audacy stopped using CBS content 1 day before the shut down.
CBS News Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley | Listen to Podcasts On Demand Free | TuneIn
CBS News Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley podcast on demand - Listen to free internet radio, news, sports, music, audiobooks, and podcasts. Stream live CNN, FOX News Radio, and MS NOW. Plus 100,000 AM/FM radio stations featuring music, news, and local sports talk.
CBS Evening News | Listen to Podcasts On Demand Free | TuneIn
CBS Evening News podcast on demand - Listen to free internet radio, news, sports, music, audiobooks, and podcasts. Stream live CNN, FOX News Radio, and MS NOW. Plus 100,000 AM/FM radio stations featuring music, news, and local sports talk.
Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan | Listen to Podcasts On Demand Free | TuneIn
Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan podcast on demand - Listen to free internet radio, news, sports, music, audiobooks, and podcasts. Stream live CNN, FOX News Radio, and MS NOW. Plus 100,000 AM/FM radio stations featuring music, news, and local sports talk.
Audacy All-News, News/Talk Stations Add ABC News Newscasts After CBS News Radio Shutters
An Audacy spokesperson confirmed to Barrett Media that all stations will be airing ABC News by Saturday morning.
barrettmedia.com
As far as I know, that is the only radio station that carries C-SPAN radio. The only other outlet is a Sirius channel.
C-SPAN Radio | SiriusXM
From the halls of Congress, U.S. agency hearings, committee meetings, and policy-shaping events.
CBS Radio Mystery Theater was produced in New York, NY, and many of the actors and actresses who appeared on the show were also working in Broadway theater shows at the same time. So doing the radio show, while still union, wasn't where they earned most of their money. And one of those actors (Tony Roberts) went to Mutual after the radio show closed and became a play-by-play announcer of both professional and college football games on both Mutual and Westwood One for many years. What I'm saying (and this may not be true for everyone involved) is that a lot of these people, assuming they are still alive, are not financially hurting, despite the shows being freely available over the Internet.
Nope. Two different people. Tony Roberts the actor was born in New York, and appeared in a number of Woody Allen movies, and just died last year.
Tony Roberts the sportscaster was born in Chicago as John Robert Baffa, and was a sports announcer his entire life. He died in 2023.
Stealing from people is still stealing regardless of their financial situation.