Politics
WCBS Had a Dramatic Start. Now It’s Coming to an End.
The all-news station has been on the air for nearly 57 years. Its debut was held up when a stolen plane crashed into the station’s transmitter.
Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at the history of WCBS, the all-news station. We’ll also look at Justice Juan Merchan’s third rejection of Donald Trump’s move for him to recuse himself from Trump’s case.
Credit…CBS, via Getty Images
WCBS Newsradio 880 will become WHSQ-AM, an all-sports station, on Aug. 26. If WCBS were to last two more days, it would have been a news outlet for 57 years.
On Aug. 28, 1967, the day Newsradio 880 made its debut, a stolen plane put the station itself in the news.
In recent years, as the digital world of podcasters and streaming services has cut into the audience of radio stations everywhere, WCBS-AM has held on to a loyal base of stubbornly analog New Yorkers. As my colleague Corey Kilgannon wrote, they are mourning the loss of one of the city’s last mostly all-news stations. Not even WCBS has been broadcasting all news all the time. It began carrying New York Mets games in 2019. They will continue on WHSQ.
Officials with Audacy, the broadcast conglomerate that owns WCBS-AM, blamed the switch on “headwinds facing local journalism nationwide.” And the change will not deprive radio listeners of their news fix: Audacy also owns WINS, the other all-news station in New York. Since the fall of 2022, WINS, which has a larger audience, has been broadcasting on FM as well as AM.
