In an era of
fake news and AI-generated content to close down a major source of broadcast
news seems perverse. But that’s exactly what has happened this week in the USA
with the end of, after nearly 99 years, CBS News Radio. The final broadcasts
featuring the CBS chime or ‘bong’ and the opening line “This is CBS News on the
Hour, your home for original reporting” were heard yesterday.
It was a
tough week for CBS as not only was its radio news operation closing but some of
its newscasts were reporting on the end of another part of CBS, the final
edition of The Late Show with Stephen
Colbert after eleven seasons and the closure as a production centre of the
Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway.
CBS News
Radio had started in September 1927 and cemented its reputation during World
War II with the famous reports from London by Edward R. Murrow and his “Hello
America. This is London Calling”. Newscasters such as John Daly, Douglas
Edwards and Dallas Townsend would become trusted household names. The daily World News Roundup started in March 1938
and was the longest-running US radio newscast. At its height about 1,000 stations carried the
news service and until recently there had been around 700 affiliates. In the
days running up to the closure many stations, especially those owned by Audacy
such as WBBM, WTOP and KCBS, switched to ABC news bulletins.
The demise
of CBS News Radio stems from the change of ownership last year at the parent company
Paramount Skydance and the controversial appointment of Bari Weiss as editor-in
chief. In March it was announced that the service would close citing a shift ‘in
radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities’.
CBS News
Radio closed on Friday 22 May with the final top of the hour newscast at 11pm
ET and the last half-hour news update at 11.30pm ET. Both these broadcasts were
in fact tributes to the history of the news service and a chance for some familiar
voices to say goodbye. The final World
News Roundup was read by Steve Kathan and the final bulletins were
presented by Christopher Cruise.
Here is a
selection of newscasts from during the week including the final ones.
The 40-minute feature Good Night and Good Luck: A CBS News Radio Retrospective has been posted on YouTube by WMBS590AM.
The epitome of US top 40 radio in the 1960s must surely be
the deep, fast-talking voice of Dan Ingram and those fabulous PAMS jingles
where every link reinforces the station brand. "It's 20 WABC minutes to 7".
Cue jingle "Dan Ingram."
It was a style and pace that must have influenced a generation
of US jocks and even permeated to Britain via the offshore pirates who were
encouraged to listen to tapes of those WABC airchecks.
Dan Ingram's radio career had started in 1958 but his
greatest on-air reign was at WABC beaming out across the eastern seaboard from
the studios in New York City from 1961 to 1982 alongside other legendary voices
like Ron Lundy, Cousin Brucie and Harry Harrison. When the station flipped formats
to talk radio he would eventually find a new audience at WCBS-FM until his retirement
in 2003. The news of Big Dan's death was announced this week.
Thankfully there are dozens of recordings of Dan online but
here's a scoped aircheck I have from late 1976 with his show punctuated by JAM
shotguns.
JAM Creative Production head and lifelong Dan Ingram fan Jon
Wolfert wrote this tribute.
I grew up hearing this man's radio show on WABC New York in
the 60s. He influenced everything from my love of radio to my sense of humor.
There were many days when listening to him after school was the best thing that
happened. Fortunately, in later years I got the opportunity to tell him so and
thank him.
At JAM we sang his name in jingles many times. He narrated
several of our demo tapes. We even worked together on a syndicated radio show
for a while in the 80s.
'Big Dan' was simply the best top-40 DJ of all time. He
influenced countless people in our industry, and touched millions of listeners.
His ratings in the afternoon are legendary. I'm sure you will find tributes all
over the web today that will explain the details, and they are well deserved.
There will never be another with his wit, timing, and feel for the medium.. Dan
Ingram was truly one of a kind. Our condolences to his family.
Bye now, Kemosabe. And thanks again.
You can read and hear more about Dan on the musicradio77website. Allen Sniffen presented a tribute programme yesterday and there's also
a 6-hour Rewound Radio special from 2016. This coming weekend Rewound Radio
will feature a selection of Dan's show at WABC and WCBS-FM.
This year has seen the celebrations of the Sinatra Centenary
marking one hundred years since the birth of Francis Albert Sinatra in, as
every quizzer knows, Hoboken, New Jersey.
Sinatra's meteoric rise to worldwide stardom happened over just a few months between the autumn of 1942
and the spring of 1943 and coincided with the Golden Age of US radio.
Frank's musical ambitions were set a decade earlier in 1933
after watching a well-known crooner in concert. "I saw Bing Crosby tonight
and I've got to be a singer", he told his parents. Most of his early performances
were in local talent contests but by September 1935 he made his first broadcast
whilst singing as part of The Hoboken
Four. The show, at New York's Capitol Theatre, was carried by one of the
local radio stations.
His time with the singing group was brief and he was soon back
to touring the clubs and theatres. But he realised that he'd only make the big
time with radio exposure so he'd offer to sing for free whenever a station had
a vacant spot. WNEW provided him with a number of opportunities but seemingly
only WAAT in Newark paid him a fee - the 70 cents bus fare home.
His break came when he filled a vacancy for a singer and
compere at the Rustic Club, a local roadhouse on Route 9W in Alpine, New
Jersey. Quickly building up a repertoire of songs and a neat line in audience
repartee, Frank's shows were wired into the local stations. The Rustic Club's
management relished the publicity and upped his weekly wage from $15 to $25.
Those early broadcasts proved invaluable. In the summer of
1939 Benny Goodman's former trumpeter, Harry James, was establishing a new band
and was looking for a vocalist. Hearing one of the Rustic Club shows James
asked who this kid was. Young Frank was signed up just days later. His first
performance with Harry James was on 30 June and he cut his first record just a fortnight
later.
Sinatra's time with James was brief, by January 1940 he'd been poached by Tommy Dorsey and was
touring, recording and regularly appearing on the radio. With Dorsey he honed
his craft and learnt his distinctive
musical phrasing, though he was still unnamed on the records they released with
their generic credit to "with vocal chorus". Ambitious to the last he
eventually flew the Dorsey coop in September 1942.
It was Marnie Sachs at Columbia Records who found Sinatra
his first solo break, a twice weekly slot on CBS titled Songs by Sinatra. Next he was the "Added Extra
Attraction" on the bill of a New Year's Eve Benny Goodman show at the
Paramount Theatre in New York. The screams that greeted the scrawny young
singer stopped Goodman in his tracks. A star was born. It was the start of the
infamous bobby-soxers period. Time
magazine proclaimed that "not since the days of Rudolph Valentino has
American womanhood made such unabashed public love to an entertainer".
The impact of the Paramount shows, which eventually ran for
a recording-breaking eight weeks, was immediate. In January he negotiated a
film contract with RKO and was then signed up to replace Barry Wood on the
weekly networked Saturday night concert show, Your Hit Parade. By February the programme had doubled its
audience.
Sinatra's fame was also spreading across the Atlantic. He'd
first appeared on BBC radio in 1940 when it broadcast a recording of a Harry
James show. But in 1944 the General Forces Programme relayed a joint production
with NBC called Atlantic Spotlight
that featured Frank. From December 1944 to May 1945 the BBC also carried the Your Hit Parade shows, though it just
billed them under the name of the show's musical director as Mark Warnow and his Orchestra.
By 1947 Frank was earning $12,000 a programme even though
his career was now on the wane. The mainly Republican press laid into Sinatra;
they frowned upon politically committed stars, his private life came under the
spotlight, especially his dalliances with actresses like Lana Turner, and there
were verbal and physical punch-ups. Even his radio appearances were coming
under fire with Metronome describing
them as "alternately dull, pompous and raucous". He gave up the shows
in May 1949 fed up with both the songs he was given to sing and the style in
which he had to sing them.
Frank starred in a
number of other US radio shows in the early 1950s, these are listed in
this Wikipedia entry. Meanwhile, in the way that Sinatra would continue to make
several comebacks during his lifetime, by 1953 his fortunes had revived: he
signed up with Capitol Records and established his superb musical relationship
with Nelson Riddle and Billy May and there was a successful tour of Britain.
That British concert tour led to a couple of appearances
that summer on the Light Programme's Show
Band Show as well as an interview with David Jacobs on his Radio Luxembourg
show Portrait of a Star - David
recalls this meeting in All or Nothing At
All below. Apart from a 1954 disc jockey show on NBC that seems to the end
of Frank's radio career. After that its programmes about the man himself, some
concert recordings and film reviews and soundtracks (see the BBC's Movie-Go-Round for instance).
Firstly, on the occasion of Frank's 70th birthday, comes
this appraisal of his life and career from American novelist and screenwriter
Clancy Sigal, All or Nothing at All.
It aired on BBC Radio 4 on 8 December 1985.
Secondly a programme presented by the British DJ that knew
the man himself, David Jacobs. This is the first edition of a 13-part series
titled Frank Sinatra: The Voice of the
Century. It was broadcast on 4 October 1998.
And finally all I have of a 3-part series written and
presented by Benny Green, Sinatra! A Man
and his Music. This was first broadcast in December 1985 but my recording
comes from a November 1986 repeat.
Reference: Frank Sinatra by John Howlett (Plexus, 1980)
Where were
you the day Kennedy was shot? An oft
asked question for those that remember 22 November fifty years ago. I don’t
remember the day, though I have a pretty good clue as to what I was doing: it
was my second birthday. I was probably eating a bowl of jelly.
Imagine
if such news like this broke today with instant worldwide communications and
rolling news channels. How different it was in 1963 when listeners to BBC radio
got this 30-second story of the shooting from newsreader Jimmy Kingsbury before
moving on with “the rest of the news”.
In this
sound montage you’ll hear a brief reminder of John F. Kennedy’s election to the
presidency in 1960 and then radio and TV actuality from November 1963. The
recordings are taken from US radio coverage, BBC radio and TV and include Leonard Parkin's first report for that evening's edition of Radio Newsreel.
Tonight BBC Radio 2 remembers the events of 22 November 1963 as they happened in JFK: Minute by Minute. CBSNews.com will be streaming the original news coverage in real time over four days from the shooting to the funeral.
