Re: The story about Harley Carnes is the urban legend!
> The CBS Radio Network is no longer part of CBS News. The
> people who do "CBS Radio" news broadcasts also produce,
> write, edit and read news broadcasts under other Westwood
> One Brands.
Yes, they do, but they do it as CBS News employees.
In practice, the lines are far more blurred than you'd like to make them out to be. The CBS Radio News newsroom is still at the Broadcast Center at 524 W. 57th, right down the hallway from the Westwood One master control, which handles distribution of CBS Radio and many other networks, some of which are owned by Westwood One and some which simply contract with WW1 for distribution.
Tangled in among those offices in the narrow web of hallways on the first floor of the Broadcast Center are the 60 Minutes studios, CBS Television Network master control, and down the hall a bit, Studio 47, where the Evening News originates. Whatever distinctions may apply on paper, in practice it all still functions as "CBS News."
(WCBS-TV is in a completely separate newsroom tucked in behind the big studios upstairs, and when WCBS 880 moved to the Broadcast Center from Black Rock a few years ago, it ended up way upstairs on the 8th floor of the office tower.)
One more bit of useless Broadcast Center trivia: what's now the CBS Radio newsroom was Cronkite's original newsroom/studio. Cronkite's on-camera map of Vietnam now hangs, framed, above the executive producer's desk.
> That policy did not
> and does not apply to Osgood's radio work because the radio
> network operating under the CBS brand is not part of CBS
> News. (When you call, the people on the desk answer the
> phone "network news".)
Only for the same reason I used to answer the phone on the desk at WBZ as "Radio News." When you're answering the phone 50 times an hour, brevity counts.
"Osgood Files" is not part of CBS News; it's a commentary broadcast that's part of the CBS Radio Network. If Osgood were to do one of the hourly radio newscasts, he'd be doing it for CBS News.
> WCBS Radio is an Infinity Broadcasting station and is also
> not part of CBS News (dating to well before WCBS adopted the
> all news format).
This is true. CBS has long drawn a distinction between its own network news employees (including those in radio news) and anyone else. I remember the first time I filed to the network from WBZ with the outcue, "Scott Fybush, CBS News, Boston" and was reprimanded - the correct formulation, even though WBZ had by that point become a "CBS Radio" station, was "Scott Fybush, FOR CBS News, Boston." I believe that would have been the case had I been filing from WCBS or WBBM or KNX, as well.
> And these news readers like to claim they write their own
> newscasts. (1) Why is the writing style so uniform? (2)
> Why do they have all those writers?
The writing style's so uniform because that's what the writers are paid to do. I know - I was one, at WBZ, for much of the early 90s.
"All those writers"? The last time I was in the CBS Radio newsroom, a month or so ago, there were a total of maybe a dozen people in there, in the middle of the day on a weekday. WCBS staffs two writers and two anchors per daytime shift, if memory serves. At WBZ, we had one writer per shift (except mornings, which had two). That's NOTHING, compared to TV.
At WBZ, the practice was generally for the anchors to write most of their own "A" block
00-:03/:30-:33) and for the writers to handle the rest. I'd guess it works similarly at the network level.
> All that said, Carnes is good at what he does and I doubt he
> would have done anything so unprofessional as what the
> original poster described. I also doubt he would have
> remained employed if he had.
Carnes wouldn't have been allowed to show that much personality a decade ago. Times have changed. He's now encouraged to show some humor and personality in his newscasts. I didn't hear the one in question, but I have no doubt that it was pretty much as described. <P ID="signature">______________
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