STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The CBS Radio news network signs off for the last time tonight after almost a century. CBS delivered news and entertainment on hundreds of radio stations across this country, but the network's new owners announced in March they were closing down CBS News Radio, executives citing, quote, "challenging economic realities." NPR's Scott Horsley has our appreciation.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Before there was television, long before there were podcasts, CBS Radio basically invented broadcast news. In big cities and remote farmhouses, families would gather around the radio to hear President Roosevelt deliver a fireside chat or Edward R. Murrow's eyewitness accounts of the Blitz.
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EDWARD R MURROW: This is London being bombed again. Half an hour ago, I could read street signs in the flash of antiaircraft batteries. Little patches of sparks on the pavements marked the point where shrapnel fell.
HORSLEY: Broadcasts like that one brought the sound of the world into people's living rooms. In the process, CBS Radio made the world a little smaller and listeners' vision a little broader. One of those listening was a young boy in Baltimore named Charles Osgood.
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CHARLES OSGOOD: I think it was during World War II, listening to those voices that still ring in my ear of Lowell Thomas and Ed Murrow and all of those voices. That really opened up the world for me.
HORSLEY: Eventually, Osgood himself would become one of the best-known voices on CBS. The late broadcaster spoke with NPR's Bob Edwards back in 2004.
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OSGOOD: I think I knew, even before the first time I ever walked into a real studio, that there couldn't possibly be anything more fun than being in radio.
HORSLEY: Generations of talented wordsmiths polished their craft at CBS. Before Charles Kuralt went on the road and Peggy Noonan penned speeches for presidents, they got their start working overnights, pounding away at typewriters, painting vivid pictures for the ear. Judy Muller was eventually promoted to morning drive time.
JUDY MULLER: I was Charlie Osgood's summer replacement, which was a big deal. I remember I was sitting in the newsroom, and Mike Wallace walked in. And he comes over and says, so you're the woman with balls in her voice. I said, wow, is that a compliment? (Laughter) And it was.
HORSLEY: Muller ultimately left CBS to become a television reporter at ABC, but she still gets a charge every time she hears the sounder for the radio newscast at the top of the hour.
MULLER: I still think radio is my favorite medium. It's a storyteller's medium. It's a writer's medium. And it's very intimate with listeners.
HORSLEY: CBS Radio is still carried on some 700 stations, but fewer people are listening to the radio these days. There are other ways to entertain yourself in the car now, and young people have grown to expect more personalized programming from their smartphones. CBS' parent company was sold to David Ellison's Skydance Media last year. The new owners announced two months ago they were silencing the microphones and laying off the radio staff. For Paul Farry, the news prompted reflection on the more than two decades he spent producing the "World News Roundup," the nation's longest-running newscast.
PAUL FARRY: Ever since the announcement in March, I've been hearing from people I haven't talked to in years. And it's been great to kind of catch up and see what they're doing now and talking about the old days. It's very bittersweet. Lot of good memories, but it's end of an era.
HORSLEY: On her last day at CBS decades ago, Judy Muller signed off with a quote from Norman Maclean - "eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." Muller, who's an avid fly-fisher, takes some comfort in those same words today.
MULLER: A river runs through everything, and time goes on. So it'll be OK. We'll go on. But I am so glad I was there.
HORSLEY: Christopher Cruise is set to deliver the final CBS Radio newscast just after 11:30 Eastern time tonight.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
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QUEEN: (Singing) Or just don't care and just complain when you're not there.
INSKEEP: And we reached out to Christopher Cruise to see what will be on his mind tonight as he writes that final newscast.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: I'll be thinking a lot about our predecessors at the network and what they built. They were always with us. Names like Edward R. Murrow and Charles Collingwood, Richard C. Hottelet, Robert Trout, Dan Rather, Christopher Glenn, Frank Settipani, Bill Whitney, Nick Young, Bill Lynch. I'll be thinking of them and the thousands of people who made CBS Radio News what it was over the decades, our hundreds of affiliates and our millions of listeners around the country and around the world. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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