Twelve days remain before CBS News Radio sends its final World News Roundup at midnight Friday, May 22. [1] The closure was announced March 20 by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski; the network served roughly 700 affiliates and was founded in 1927. [2] The paper's Saturday account treated the missing preservation plan as the structural story. Day twenty has not closed it.

The archive in question — the audio of Edward R. Murrow's London broadcasts, the World Trade Center coverage, ninety-nine years of bulletin tape — is held inside CBS News and Paramount facilities under no announced transfer plan. The Library of Congress, the Paley Center for Media and several university broadcasting libraries have made informal inquiries, according to two trade-union sources who asked not to be named. CBS has not confirmed any conversation. [3]

Weiss has not publicly addressed the question. Cibrowski has not. The Paramount communications office, asked Friday, declined to comment on archive arrangements. Twelve days is a short window in which to draft a transfer agreement, conduct a chain-of-custody audit, and physically move tape. It is a long enough window to announce the intention to do so. Neither has happened.

The network will mark its sign-off on the air. What happens to the tape after the microphones go dark is the question no executive in the building has yet answered.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York