CBS News Ends Century-Old Radio Service, Cuts 6% of Workforce

CBS News announced on March 20, 2026 that it will eliminate approximately 6% of its workforce—roughly 60 employees—and shut down CBS News Radio, a service that has operated continuously since September 1927 [1][2]. The radio service, which currently feeds news programming to an estimated 700 affiliate stations across the United States, will go dark on May 22 [3]. It is the second round of layoffs at CBS News since David Ellison's Skydance Media completed its acquisition of Paramount last summer, and the first major restructuring move directed by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss [4].

The Scope of the Cuts

The layoffs affect approximately 60 employees across CBS News, according to sources familiar with the matter [1]. All positions within the CBS News Radio team are being eliminated outright [5]. While CBS News has not disclosed a precise departmental breakdown, the cuts are smaller than initially feared—reports in February suggested the news division might eliminate as much as 15% of its staff [6].

The October 2025 round, which came shortly after the Skydance-Paramount merger closed, hit close to 100 CBS News staffers as part of a broader company-wide reduction of roughly 1,000 positions [5]. That round saw the streaming editions of CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News canceled, and the hosts of CBS Saturday Morning were among those let go [4].

Specific severance terms for the current round have not been publicly disclosed. However, the severance question has become a flashpoint at CBS News: the unionized staff of CBS News 24/7, the network's streaming service, has been fighting to preserve its previous contract's minimum of eight weeks' severance plus two additional weeks for every year worked [7]. Contract negotiations between the roughly 60-person CBS News 24/7 unit and management broke down in mid-March, leading to a 24-hour walkout on March 17—three days before the layoffs were announced [7][8].

A Service Older Than Television

CBS News Radio predates the network itself. When it went on the air in September 1927, it gave a young William S. Paley his start in the broadcasting business [2]. Edward R. Murrow's wartime dispatches from London during World War II—among the most celebrated moments in American journalism—were delivered through the radio service [2][3]. Walter Cronkite, who would become the face of CBS television news, also came up through the radio ranks [5].

For decades, the service was best known for its top-of-the-hour news roundups, brief bulletins that gave affiliate stations across the country a reliable feed of national and international headlines [3]. At its peak during the mid-20th century, network radio news reached tens of millions of American households daily, serving as a primary source of information alongside newspapers.

In their memo to staff, Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski acknowledged the weight of the decision: "While this was a necessary decision, it was not an easy one" [3]. They attributed the closure to "a shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities" that had "made it impossible to continue the service" [2][5].

Who Loses Access

The closure leaves approximately 700 affiliate stations scrambling to find a replacement national news feed before the May 22 cutoff, a window of just two months [4]. Many of these affiliates serve small and mid-size markets where CBS Radio's top-of-the-hour updates may be one of the few sources of national news programming.

Radio remains a disproportionately important medium for certain demographics. According to Pew Research Center, 82% of Americans ages 12 and older listened to terrestrial radio in a given week as of 2022, though that figure has declined from 89% in 2019 [9]. The drop has been steeper for news-format stations: an analysis of 46 public radio news stations found weekly cumulative audiences fell 13% from 2022 to 2023 and more than 24% since 2019 [10].

Older Americans, rural communities where broadband access is limited, and commuters who rely on AM/FM radio are among those most likely to feel the gap. The National Association of Broadcasters has long emphasized that local radio and television stations are "a vital and irreplaceable resource to rural communities, providing them with entertainment and important news and emergency information" [11]. CBS News has not announced any plan to provide alternative coverage to communities that currently receive CBS news exclusively through the radio service.

The Broader Media Contraction

CBS News's 6% cut fits within a sweeping contraction across legacy media. Entertainment and media companies cut more than 17,000 jobs in 2025, an 18% increase from the previous year, with news organizations alone accounting for 2,254 of those losses [12].

The major broadcast networks have all made significant reductions:

• NBC News laid off approximately 150 employees in October 2025, roughly 7% of its staff [13].
• ABC News cut just under 200 employees in May 2025 as part of broader Disney layoffs [12].
• CNN slashed 200 staffers in January 2026 amid a pivot toward digital and a new streaming service [12].
• The Washington Post cut roughly one-third of its staff in February 2026, affecting sports, books, podcasts, foreign desks, and national teams [14].
• The Los Angeles Times enacted a 6% newsroom reduction in mid-2025 [12].

Source: Variety / The Wrap / NBC News / Multiple sources

Data as of Mar 20, 2026CSV

The pattern is consistent: legacy news organizations are shedding staff as linear television ratings decline, advertising revenue shifts to digital platforms, and corporate owners—many of them recently merged or acquired—demand cost efficiencies.

The Weiss Factor

The layoffs represent the first major operational move under Bari Weiss, who was appointed CBS News editor-in-chief in October 2025 by Skydance CEO David Ellison [4]. Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor and founder of the digital media company The Free Press, had no television news experience before taking the role [7].

In a January 2026 all-hands meeting, Weiss delivered a blunt assessment: CBS News would be "toast" if it continued to simply chase the dwindling broadcast television audience [15]. "Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television," she said, arguing that the network needed to become "a digital engine that meets news consumers far from broadcast TV" [16].

Weiss outlined plans to add 19 new contributors while shifting resources toward digital platforms and restructuring operations [16]. Paramount also completed a reported $150 million acquisition of The Free Press, Weiss's own media outlet, as part of the broader investment in reshaping CBS News [17].

The CBS Evening News has been struggling in the ratings, with viewership dropping below 4 million—underperforming both ABC's World News Tonight and NBC's Nightly News [5]. The argument for transformation has a factual basis: CBS's traditional broadcast audience is aging and shrinking.

The Union Fight

The timing of the layoffs—coming just three days after the CBS News 24/7 walkout—has sharpened tensions between management and organized labor at the network.

The 24-hour work stoppage on March 17 involved approximately 60 journalists at CBS News 24/7 in New York and San Francisco [7]. The workers, represented by the Writers Guild of America East, authorized the action after 95% of members signed a strike pledge [8]. Key sticking points included management's refusal to match the previous contract's 3% annual raises, demands that some employees work 12-hour weekend shifts despite the absence of weekend-specific programming, and the severance protections described above [7].

The WGA East also issued a statement criticizing the radio closure, calling the decision to shut CBS News Radio "indicative of Bari Weiss and David Ellison's inept leadership" [1]. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jerry Nadler publicly supported the striking workers [8].

Management has framed the restructuring differently—as a necessary modernization. Weiss and Cibrowski wrote in their memo that "the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it" [5].

What CBS Is Betting On Instead

Weiss's stated strategy centers on making CBS News competitive in digital and streaming. Paramount's direct-to-consumer division already encompasses Paramount+, Pluto TV, CBS News 24/7, and CBS Sports HQ [17]. The vision is to transform CBS News from a broadcast-first operation into a multi-platform entity that can reach younger audiences through streaming, social media, and digital publishing.

The investment case has some support. Live news and sports programming are less vulnerable to the cord-cutting trends that have devastated scripted entertainment, because they offer real-time value that audiences are less likely to time-shift or pirate [17]. CBS's sports portfolio, anchored by NFL broadcasts, remains a significant draw.

But the streaming strategy carries risks. CBS News 24/7, the very platform Weiss has called "a lab for new formats," is the unit whose staff just walked off the job [7]. And the broader streaming market is saturated—Paramount+ has struggled to achieve profitability against Netflix, Disney+, and other competitors.

The financial specifics of CBS News Radio's operating costs and revenue have not been publicly disclosed. Industry observers have long assumed that network radio news services operate at thin margins or outright losses, subsidized by their parent companies partly for brand prestige and public-interest obligations. Without transparent financial data, it is difficult to assess whether the resources freed by the radio closure will meaningfully fund new journalism or simply reduce overhead.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data as of Mar 20, 2026CSV

What's Lost

Beyond the jobs and the affiliate relationships, the closure of CBS News Radio ends one of the last direct links to the founding era of broadcast journalism. The service's institutional knowledge—its editorial processes for rapid-turnaround audio news, its relationships with hundreds of local stations, its role as a training ground for broadcast journalists—cannot be easily replicated.

CBS News Radio also served a practical emergency-broadcast function. During natural disasters, power outages, and other crises, AM/FM radio has historically been the medium of last resort—accessible without internet, cellular service, or electricity beyond a battery-powered receiver. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission have both emphasized radio's unique role in emergency communications. Removing a major national news feed from that ecosystem reduces the options available to local stations in crisis situations.

The question Weiss and Ellison face is whether the resources saved—a figure they have not disclosed—can actually produce more journalism through digital channels than the radio service was delivering to its 700 affiliates. Critics, including the WGA East, argue the cuts are about ideology and cost-cutting rather than strategic investment [1]. Supporters of the restructuring contend that pouring resources into a medium with a declining audience is itself a form of waste—money that could be reaching millions through platforms where people actually consume news in 2026.

The Unsentimental Calculus

There is a version of this story that is simply about arithmetic. Terrestrial radio listenership has been falling for years. Telecommunications employment has dropped nearly 30% in a decade, from 848,200 jobs in January 2014 to 601,700 in January 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data [18]. The audience for network radio news is a fraction of what it was a generation ago. Podcasts, streaming audio, and social media have absorbed much of the demand that once sustained services like CBS News Radio.

But arithmetic doesn't capture what's being lost. CBS News Radio survived the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam, Watergate, 9/11, and every technological disruption of the past century. Its closure is not just a business decision—it is the end of a continuous thread connecting today's news industry to its origins in the 1920s. Whether the digital transformation Weiss envisions will produce journalism worthy of that lineage remains to be seen.

The 700 affiliate stations have until May 22 to figure out where their next top-of-the-hour headlines will come from.