After nearly 100 years of continuous operation, CBS News Radio is entering its final week on the air – yet one more casualty of the rapidly evolving world of mass media.
The network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and the beloved “CBS World News Roundup” program will be shut down on May 22nd. In a memo to employees back in March, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss elaborated on the decision.
“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it,” they wrote. “New audiences are burgeoning in new places, and we are pressing forward with ambitious plans to grow and invest so that we can be there for them.”
Those “new places” include podcasting and social media. Over 700 affiliate stations will be impacted by the closure. Many of the outlets are expected to turn to previous competitors ABC News, Fox News, and NBC News for half-hour and hourly radio news feeds.
But if your favorite CBS News Radio station is being impacted, now would be the perfect time to switch to one of several Christian news radio options.
You actually have several excellent ones to choose from, including SRN News (Salem Media), and American Family Radio News. Neither of these outlets are available everywhere via terrestrial radio, but they can both be accessed online.
Salem Radio Network News can be heard online here. Best known for carrying many of your favorite Christian teaching talk programs such as “Focus on the Family with Jim Daly” and “Insight for Living” with Pastor Chuck Swindoll, you’ll receive a reliable daily dose of news several times every hour from a trustworthy source.
American Family Radio (AFR), founded by Reverend Don Wildmon as the broadcast division of the American Family Association, first hit the radio airwaves in 1991. Its mission was grand and straightforward: “To transform American culture and to give aid to the church, here and abroad, in its calling to fulfill the Great Commission.” With over 180 radio affiliates, you can also listen online.
Radio news dates back to 1920 and Pittsburgh’s KDKA. Their first broadcast featured election results of President Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory over Democrat James M. Cox.
What was considered “religious programming” soon followed and included well-known and beloved Christian preachers who became ever more well-known and beloved because of the power of the new wireless broadcast medium. You’re undoubtedly familiar with many of the names from those early days: Aimee Semple McPherson, D.L. Moody, Dr. Charles E. Fuller, and Dr. Donald James Barnhouse.
From the beginning of the medium, radio and Christianity have been closely intertwined. In fact, it’s long been considered an extension and manifestation of the Great Commission and Jesus’ command to “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
Focus on the Family is grateful for its many radio broadcast partners, all of whom help to amplify the message and by doing so, proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In addition to Salem Media and American Family, we work closely with Moody Radio, the Bott Radio Network, and Northwestern Media, among others.
The late ABC Radio newsman Paul Harvey often said that all news was biased, at least by degrees. “It’s not just what’s reported,” he once told me. “It’s also what’s not reported.” For example, when Focus on the Family held New York state’s largest pro-life rally in its history back in Times Square in May 2019, SRN News was on site and covering it. No other secular radio outlet bothered to show up – even though we were just blocks from their door.
That type of selective coverage is a good reminder that when you’re listening to the news, you’re not necessarily hearing what’s going on – you’re hearing what your outlet of choice decides to tell you is going on.
But many of us are still drawn to the medium of radio. It conjures up not only memories but also wonderful images on our minds.
The late Charles Osgood, who was a fixture on CBS News Radio and hosted “The Osgood File” for over 45 years, would playfully end his time each week on CBS News Sunday Morning by saying, “See you on the radio” – a nod to the medium’s penchant for tapping into the theater of the mind.
It seems that phrase once irritated a viewer, though, who wrote to him. Here is how he told the tale:
“Dear Mr. Osgood,” someone wrote, “That sign off is absurd. Radio is for the ear…the song or spoken word. The medium for seeing us, without a doubt, TV. We therefore call it video, that’s Latin for ‘I see.’ So please don’t say that anymore. You really should know better.”
Charles Osgood was known for his rhyming poems, so in keeping with that tradition and the writer’s own cleverness, Osgood answered in kind, and in part:
“Dear Sir,” I then wrote back to him, and this was my reply: I do believe that you are wrong, and let me tell you why. I’ve worked some years in radio, and television, too. And though it’s paradoxical, it nonetheless is true. That radio is visual, much more so than TV. And there’s plenty of good reason why that paradox should be.
You insist that on the radio there are no pictures there. You say it’s only for the ear, but I say au contraire.
There are fascinating pictures on the radio you see, that are far more picturesque than any pictures on TV.
No television set that’s made, no screen that you can find, can compare with that of radio: the theatre of the mind.
So, farewell to CBS News Radio and its nearly 100 years on the air, but please shed no tears, just consider welcoming Salem, where you’ll get news and prayers.
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