CBS News Radio goes off the air May 22, 2026 — 23 days from this edition. The shutdown was announced March 20 inside Bari Weiss and Tom Cibrowski's 6% layoff round and confirmed in a follow-up memo to the network's roughly 700 affiliated stations. [1] The number on the calendar is the news the paper has not seen written: a near-century-old service ending on a date, with a downstream affiliate count and a labor union charge already on the record.

The Writers Guild of America East said the closure was driven by "inept leadership" — its phrase for the Weiss-Ellison pair installed by Paramount Skydance's October acquisition of The Free Press for $150 million. [2] CBS Radio's roots go to 1927, predating the network's television operation by two decades. [3] The 700-station figure is the distribution texture: small-market stations, a number of public-radio carriers, and several news-talk affiliates that built schedules around CBS hourly newscasts will be without that network on May 23.

The countdown gives the press-freedom-wartime thread a date. CBS News's own ombudsman role does not apply here — radio's editorial decisions sit with the network president, the same executive who oversaw the layoff round. The affiliates losing network feed are not negotiating; the contracts terminate by the deadline. Several have already told local press they will replace the CBS feed with syndicated talk programming.

What the calendar leaves is operational: 23 days for affiliates to source replacement programming, 23 days for laid-off radio journalists to find work elsewhere, and 23 days for Paramount Skydance to defend the closure against a WGAE complaint calling it the largest single radio-newsroom contraction in modern memory. The closure is on the calendar. The replacement is not.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin