WCBS-AM R.I.P.

Tonight WCBS-AM, News Radio, will cease to broadcast. Its owner/parent, Audacy, has given its airways to ESPN and WCBS will not be re-located. It will just die.

The news-radio format debuted on August 28, 1967, almost 57 years ago.

Here is the history of the station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCBS_(AM)

It's painful when the NYC community loses a prominent station that has touched our lives. It was hard to let go of WEVD, which left ironically on the last Friday of August in 2001, weeks before 9/11. This impending absence has the same pain of a void.

Personally, I remember listening to WCBS as our family drove from NJ to Long Island in the 70's for the two-hour ride. Traffic, news, weather. Never the same loop of information. Charles Osgood, Ed Bradley, Jim Donnelly, Lou Adler seemed to talk to me, personally.

And I remember relying on WCBS during crises such as September 11, 2001. WEVD was gone and WCBS was broadcasting details as they became available. There was comprehensive journalism during this horrible 48 hours. And during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. No electricity in many parts of the NYC region. I had a working transistor radio tuned to WCBS. There were no newspapers and NewsRadio provided essential information to us.

WCBS is currently programmed on the radio of my car. And I will reluctantly change it tomorrow.