CBS News will shut down its nearly century-old CBS News Radio service and cut jobs amid a reorganization led by a new editor-in-chief, former journalist-analyst Barry Weiss.
This is reported by The Washington Post.
Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski announced the cuts on the morning of March 20 in two internal memos reviewed by the publication.
“Today we informed our CBS News Radio team and approximately 700 affiliated stations that we will be closing on May 22, 2026… Unfortunately, this decision means that all positions on the CBS News Radio team are being eliminated,” the statement said.
Weiss and Cibrowski ran the network after Paramount parent company Skydance acquired Weiss' online publication Free Press in October 2025 and named him editor-in-chief.
The announcement of the closure of CBS News Radio comes after a previous report that CBS News would cut jobs in its newsroom.
A person familiar with the company's operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose nonpublic information, said the cuts would affect about 6% of CBS News.
Weiss and Cibrowski outlined the cuts as part of a painful but necessary restructuring process, noting in their first memo to the editors that “the news business is changing radically, and we need to change with it.”
The publication's source added that other editorial departments, in addition to the radio team, will also be affected by the layoffs, without specifying which ones.
The Writers Guild of America Eastern and Western blamed the firing of their members working at CBS on the “irresponsibility and greed of their leaders.”
“The decision to simply close CBS News Radio is a testament to the incompetent leadership of Barry Weiss and David Ellison… Given the damage that David Ellison has done to CBS News in just a few months, the Ellison family should not be allowed to acquire CNN or any other major media outlet,” the statement said.
CBS journalists (left to right) Edmund A. Chester and Lowell Thomas at the CBS Radio microphone, April 27, 1950. Getty Images/CBS
CBS News Radio played a role in the creation of television journalism, notably through the reporting of Edward R. Murrow, who became famous for his World War II coverage for his radio division, and Walter Cronkite, who had a wide audience in the 1970s as the anchor of the CBS Evening News.
CBS sold its radio stations to Entercom (now called Audacy) in 2017, but continued to provide its news. With its signature jingle at the start of the hour, CBS News Radio has been the leading source of audio news across the country for decades, Deadline reports.