Big to assume there’s a thought process there at all.
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CBS News Radio Closed
- Thread starter TheBigA
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No assumption. She laid out her thought process to the staff a few weeks ago. If you search around, you'll find all the specifics. She offered them buyouts. She has already sold ownership on her plan. Things like this don't just "happen." She put her butt on the line, and if it doesn't work, she'll be gone.
I believe the CBS hourly news has not been on the air in NYC since WCBS (AM) died in 2024. Do they even have an affiliate there carrying the spots?
They signed WBBR as an affiliate a while back.
Sports and weather are not remotely comparable in terms of fanatical, invested fan bases.
WeatherNation pretty much fills the gap that TWC left. Plus, you are able to stream-on-demand the regional forecast that best applies to your area.
"Break even" does not take into account the waste of higher executive time supervising it.
Media veterans outraged as Bari Weiss shuts 100-year-old CBS News Radio: ‘It’s disgusting’
Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowksi said Friday that CBS Radio will shut down May 22 with all roles in the unit eliminated — a move that was driven by industry shifts and financial pre…nypost.com
“Another media exec with recent knowledge of CBS Radio’s finances said the unit was break-even, meaning that it wasn’t losing money but also wasn’t bringing any in, either.”
I picture some folks scrambling in the background to see if they can create a shoestring operation to take over some of these affiliates. They could resurrect the Mutual name, or partner with someone with a known name. (Imagine: "Washington Post Radio News" or "Gannett Radio News/US Today Radio") It shouldn't be hard to find voice trackers who will work from their spare bedroom on a form 1099. Would it be a great? Er...Without a partnership with CNN, BBC, etc., it would just be that "news reader" because they wouldn't have correspondents. Just read the AP copy? Could one guy, working from his basement, run such an operation and turn enough profit to make it worthwhile? I suppose someone out there might be mulling it over.
Absolute worst scenario: someone starts offering an all A.I. TOH newscast. My suggestion would be to call it "TRN" for Toilet Radio News. Please, flush it now!
Absolute worst scenario: someone starts offering an all A.I. TOH newscast. My suggestion would be to call it "TRN" for Toilet Radio News. Please, flush it now!
Even though CBS Radio now uses a 21st Century version of the original CBS News sounder, I still miss that first generation version, along with the similar original CBS Radio Sports sounder.
You can download the old and new CBS News sounders as MP3s here:
CBS News Radio Ringtones
Tired of your old, boring ringtone? Take CBS News Radio with you by using our Top of the Hour jingle.
www.cbsnews.com
Audacy has those affiliation contracts. But they also know the revenue numbers. Coming up with rip & read news doesn't mean anyone will want it. Then you have to sell spots, or find someone to sell. You have to build a distribution system. Still think it can be done on a shoestring?
It is remarkable to me that no one has brought this up: When CBS sold its radio O&O’s (at an inflated price, I may add) the company made quick cash. But it lost a dedicated revenue pipeline.
Listeners don’t listen to networks. They listen to local stations. Those stations compensate the networks for their services (by writing checks, offering ad inventory or a combination of both).
Radio owners are in a perpetual doldrum; many borrowed too much money to gobble each other up and are now in unrepayable debt. Their marauding chief executives never seek to improve their business models, collecting high salaries while never stopping the actual bloodletting. They’re aided in this by the United States Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas which rubber stamps their reorganizations, screwing the creditors but never demanding changes in operations that could actually lead to improvement of the business. Case in point: Cumulus is back in the bankruptcy court.
Regardless, it forces those companies to cut costs and cut costs and cut costs. One of the ways they cut costs is to lowball networks and syndicators when it comes to time to renew contracts. The network is then forced to trim its operations in order to keep making a saleable product because it’s not making the same revenue from the client stations. In terms of network radio news, it means trimming staff or trimming newsgathering activities involving travel (which is an incredibly costly thing) or they begin repurposing existing product into a new package in order to sell it differently.
The article mentioning CBS News Radio only earning $67,000 in monthly revenue demonstrates this. Despite having major market affiliates and a plethora of others, they can’t bring in a million bucks in a year? This isn’t chiefly because CBS can’t sell ads. Its because they can’t get paid by station owners what it needs.
There are other business models out there involving audio. Podcasting and streaming offers new revenue streams and advertisers are hot on it (because its audience is younger, the ad agencies are staffed by younger people and digital stuff is still the shiny new thing). Bari Weiss hired nearly 20 podcast producers who are/were not part of the “radio” unit. They’re not laid off. There’s a reason for that.
Listeners don’t listen to networks. They listen to local stations. Those stations compensate the networks for their services (by writing checks, offering ad inventory or a combination of both).
Radio owners are in a perpetual doldrum; many borrowed too much money to gobble each other up and are now in unrepayable debt. Their marauding chief executives never seek to improve their business models, collecting high salaries while never stopping the actual bloodletting. They’re aided in this by the United States Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas which rubber stamps their reorganizations, screwing the creditors but never demanding changes in operations that could actually lead to improvement of the business. Case in point: Cumulus is back in the bankruptcy court.
Regardless, it forces those companies to cut costs and cut costs and cut costs. One of the ways they cut costs is to lowball networks and syndicators when it comes to time to renew contracts. The network is then forced to trim its operations in order to keep making a saleable product because it’s not making the same revenue from the client stations. In terms of network radio news, it means trimming staff or trimming newsgathering activities involving travel (which is an incredibly costly thing) or they begin repurposing existing product into a new package in order to sell it differently.
The article mentioning CBS News Radio only earning $67,000 in monthly revenue demonstrates this. Despite having major market affiliates and a plethora of others, they can’t bring in a million bucks in a year? This isn’t chiefly because CBS can’t sell ads. Its because they can’t get paid by station owners what it needs.
There are other business models out there involving audio. Podcasting and streaming offers new revenue streams and advertisers are hot on it (because its audience is younger, the ad agencies are staffed by younger people and digital stuff is still the shiny new thing). Bari Weiss hired nearly 20 podcast producers who are/were not part of the “radio” unit. They’re not laid off. There’s a reason for that.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Once again proving the old saying about what happens when you "assume" rather than "presume" ...
I believe CBS News Radio was strictly barter. They had one minute of network time in every cast. There may have been an additional spot or two per hour involved, but radio networks are barter. The only cash one I know of is AP.
When ABC sold the radio O&Os to Citadel in 2007, the same thing happened.
ABC News Radio had 3 news anchors on shift 18hrs a day (and 2 overnight) with a constant stream of newscasts for all kinds of station formats.
That quickly dried up once the ownership of those stations was gone and Citadel either dumped out of network news entirely, or switched to someone else (hello Fox News).
ABC now has 3 full time anchors, 1 reporter in DC, and 1 reporter in LA. That's it. That's the staff.
with the end of CBS News Radio, i wouldn't be surprised if the bigger market stations just goes full local with top of the hour news updates and just mix the local, state, national and international headlines together and just cherry pick the national/international stories from a major news outlet's radio division that isn't shut down already. in Dallas, i think WBAP already does it that way with more focus on local headlines and they cherry pick the national/international headlines from their affiliation of Fox News Radio and only use Fox News Radio during the overnight hours and weekends, meanwhile KRLD will likely have to adopt this same style of format but with ABC or AP as their partners or others as a partner.
it might be possible Audacy or Cumulus may just replace CBS News Radio with a new in house news service meanwhile IHeart already has their own in house service in place and if any iHeart station had CBS News Radio afflation would just simply switch to in house news from iHeart.
it might be possible Audacy or Cumulus may just replace CBS News Radio with a new in house news service meanwhile IHeart already has their own in house service in place and if any iHeart station had CBS News Radio afflation would just simply switch to in house news from iHeart.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I think you're pretty much correct. As I just said in the San Francisco thread to someone who (I still can't believe they suggested it) thought 740 should "start fresh" and change the call letters to KFRC, the vast majority of the listeners won't even notice. It will still be all-news. And most of the audience doesn't even make a distinction between local and network. To them, it's just the news.
I know that as of 2021 there was a relatively full-service music station around Bland VA that used Fox News for their TOH newscasts. I remember listening to it there on my transistor radio when I got stranded there on a road trip (long story haha).
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