TL;DR
Thirty-three days to shutdown. The last American news institution to announce its own death rather than negotiate one.
MSM Perspective
Deadline and CBS News itself carried the memo; the AP and Washington Post ran obituaries for the radio format.
X Perspective
Media X has been tracking the Weiss era as a restructuring story; the countdown frame moved in after Mediagazer's Saturday roundup.
Thirty-three days remain until the service CBS News Radio announced on March 20 will end. The paper's April 18 account of four mechanisms of press reduction on a single page placed the shutdown alongside Pentagon press restrictions, the Novaya Gazeta silence, and Disney's ABC News cuts. On Sunday the countdown is its own story.
Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski announced May 22 as the closing date in a staff memo, citing "challenging economic realities" and a shift in station programming strategies. [1] Six percent of the CBS News workforce — sixty to seventy positions — was also laid off that Friday. [2] All CBS News Radio positions are being eliminated, affecting the seven hundred affiliated stations that depend on the service for national and international programming. [1]
The 130th Boston Marathon runs Monday morning under CBS Radio affiliation. The final top-of-the-hour sign-off lands thirty-two days past the finish line. [3] The service is older than the Great Depression — Edward R. Murrow's World War II reports from London were CBS Radio broadcasts, and "World News Roundup" is the longest-running newscast in the United States. [1]
Mediagazer aggregated the reaction: David Axelrod called it "devastating"; Talkers publisher Michael Harrison, speaking to the AP, said: "It's a shame. It's a loss for the country and for the industry." [2] Brian Stelter reported that Weiss tried to save the service but "barely any revenue was coming in month after month." [3] The first definite terminal date for a US broadcast-news institution announced rather than negotiated.
-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York