When CBS Radio News goes off the air on May 22, 2026, Americans will lose access to the news programming they have watched from their living rooms, kitchens and cars for nearly a century.
The once bipartisan idea that the nation’s media should exist to serve democracy is also fading.
As a media historian, I think the story of the rise and fall of CBS Radio News can’t be told without telling another parallel story: the story of how America stopped demanding that the media serve the public interest.
When CBS was born in 1927, radio was dominant, and this new form of mass communication was fueling lively discussion about how the media could better serve democracy.
Americans had already seen how concentrated wealth during the Gilded Age had skewed the news ecosystem by overemphasizing the concerns of the rich while shining a light on inequality, graft, and corruption. World War I demonstrated the power of the mass media to shape public opinion through propaganda, leading to calls for democratic oversight of broadcasting.
There was debate over how to regulate radio. But there was broad agreement across parties that government could play a role in protecting the public from concentrated media power and, with it, foreign misinformation, malicious special interest messages or fraudulent advertising.
early years
CBS Radio originated from the United Independent Broadcasters, founded by music manager Arthur L. There is a network of 16 local stations established by Judson. When Columbia Records purchased the stake, the name was changed to Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System.
Early broadcasts consisted only of announcers reading short breaking-news dispatches distributed by the United Press wire service. Within a few months, Columbia sold its share to William S. Paley, who streamlined the name to CBS.
Peli was no public media crusader. He was a businessman who wanted to make profits from radio. But his management reflected the belief that radio could serve two masters: the public interest and the advertiser.
He hired journalist Paul J. White was hired and created a regular news segment called “Something for Everyone”.
Although they differed on how best to achieve this, Democrats and Republicans agreed that radio should serve the public interest. In other words, because the airwaves belonged to all Americans, broadcasters had obligations beyond profits. They were required to provide reliable information, platform diverse viewpoints, and cover matters of public concern.
In the 1920s, then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was charged with formulating federal radio policy. Although he was a staunch, pro-business conservative, Hoover was also an engineer who thought the radio system should be “free from monopoly” and, like any machine, could be gradually improved so that it could better serve democracy.
In November 1925 he said, “The ether is a public medium and should be used for the public benefit.”
Republican President Calvin Coolidge signed the Radio Act of 1927 into law. After passing with overwhelming support, radio stations were required to demonstrate a commitment to “public interest, convenience and necessity” to obtain a license.
maintaining public confidence
By the time the 1934 Communications Act created the Federal Communications Commission, a regulatory agency tasked with licensing broadcasters and enforcing ownership rules, the idea that radio should serve the public had become commonplace.
In 1935, Pelly met Edward R. Murrow—who was the person most associated with CBS Radio’s public service mission—was made head of news programming.
With fascism threatening democracy throughout Europe, Murrow launched the “World News Roundup” in 1938. The longest-running news program in American media, it featured live reports broadcast by shortwave from locations around the world. American audiences gathered around their radios at night to listen to CBS’ reports, which demonstrated how live news could unite a nation and develop a richer information ecosystem than similar propaganda from Europe’s fascist powerhouses.
CBS’s entertainment coverage during World War II solidified its importance as an American institution. Murrow’s signature tag lines – “This is London” and later, “Good night and good luck” – helped build public confidence in CBS’s reliable and informative programming.
Dangers of illusion and entertainment
After the war, television challenged radio’s dominance. Peli understood that Murrow had built deep trust among listeners, and he put him in charge of CBS News as the network expanded its programming on TV.
Yet Murrow became uncomfortable with changes in the network’s coverage, which, in his view, was increasingly serving the economic interests of its owners.
Speaking to the Radio Television News Directors Association in 1958, Murrow lamented how radio and television had forgotten “to serve the public interest.” He expressed concern that “we currently have an inherent allergy to information that is unpleasant or disturbing” and observed that mass media are being used “to distract, confuse, entertain, and motivate us.”
Without serious reporting and civic responsibility as their driving principles, radio and television were losing their democratic utility, becoming mere “wires and lights in a box.”
corporations have an edge
During the 1960s and 1970s, many of the rules dating back to the birth of CBS Radio News, such as ownership restrictions and requirements for educational programming, remained on the books.
But during this period, media companies began spending huge sums on donations to legislators who could do their bidding – and taking over the regulatory bodies that were supposed to hold them accountable. Spirited debates about how radio could better serve democracy largely disappeared. Instead, the conversation focused on whether the government should have any role in regulating the media.
Principles that once had widespread public support – producing public interest news in exchange for licensing, limits on foreign ownership, and fairness rules that require stations to give equal time to both sides of an issue – have faded.
Any social responsibility other than profit making came to be seen as a threat to the American way of life. Those arguing that media should be regulated as a public utility in a pluralistic democracy were effectively ignored.
After President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, critics argued that industry lobbying had helped dismantle the public interest framework that had long controlled American broadcasting. The law relaxed ownership limits and cross-ownership rules, allowing a small number of large corporations to acquire far more stations and weakening the old public interest obligations associated with broadcast licensing.
Before the Act, corporations were limited to owning 40 radio stations. Now, groups like iHeartMedia and Audacy may own thousands.
‘The tube is flickering’
Through it all, CBS Radio News’ top hour-long bulletins continued to air, serving as a reminder of its original public mission.
Yet, the uncontrolled radio ecosystem failed to perform that task.
In the 1920s, you could hear editorials arguing that radio should not be handed over to “preachers, religious fanatics and unprincipled individuals to pursue their own interests.” By the early 2000s, divisive shock jocks and partisan anger-filled hosts dominated the radio dial.
In a 1938 radio address on CBS’s ethical commitments, Paley argued that “broadcasting as an instrument of American democracy must always be completely, honestly and militantly non-partisan.” By 2016, CEO Les Moonves defended CBS’s decision to increase coverage of President Donald Trump’s spectacularly divisive politics to juice ratings: “It may not be good for America, but it’s great for CBS.” Four years later, Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to one of radio’s most polarizing partisan preachers, Rush Limbaugh.
In his second term, Trump has abused his power over the media ecosystem. In 2025, the Trump administration’s FCC approved the merger of CBS’ parent company Paramount Global with Skydance Media. But that happened only after Paramount Global settled Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for $16 million.
Although many talented reporters and producers have left, CBS News’ recently appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has worked to make the network more friendly to the Trump administration. He temporarily shut down a “60 Minutes” segment criticizing Trump’s use of El Salvador’s CECOT prison and promoted a friendly town hall with conservative commentator Erica Kirk, the widow of slain political activist Charlie Kirk. Ratings on the network have fallen.
While Paramount Skydance is using its heavy debt load to justify shutting down CBS Radio News, the group is trying to buy CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, a move that would only further its monopoly of news media.
Americans cannot say that Murrow did not warn them.
“The tube is flickering,” he said in 1958, and unless Americans reclaim their right to information beyond the profit motive and special interests, “we shall soon see the whole struggle lost.”
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