|
I’ll try not to get too nostalgic tonight, even though I’m leading off by referencing the legendary reporter Edward R. Murrow.
Murrow is truly one of the titans of our craft, a journalist who led the way while rising to the ranks of celebrity, in large part because of his role as a war correspondent during the Blitz.
As Nazi bombs fell on London, Murrow filed dispatches that ended with the phrase that became his signature: “Good night, and good luck.”
Original radio scripts written by legendary CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow for broadcast from London. (Louis Lanzano / The Associated Press files)
It was not a good night for his longtime employer last week as CBS News Radio signed off after nearly a century on the air, ending service to some 700 stations across the United States.
“This is another part of the landscape that has fallen off into the sea,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade publication for radio talk shows. “It’s a shame. It’s a loss for the country and for the industry.”
Of course, CBS offered reasons for its decision to pull the plug on the storied service.
“While this was a necessary decision, it was not an easy one,’’ CBS said in a memo initially announcing the move in March. “A shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities, has made it impossible to continue the service.”
As an aside, this is the same CBS that ended Stephen Colbert’s show on the eve of its news radio division falling silent for good.
We live in an age when institutions come and go, when things that were always there for us… suddenly aren’t. But somehow, the news surrounding the end of CBS News Radio seems different, in part because it feels like a harbinger of what is still to come.
When the network of Murrow, Cronkite and Rather starts lopping off limbs, you have to start worrying who’s next.
And while you are worrying, ask yourself who is going to fill the void.
In a trailer for his Broadway adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney channels Murrow with these lines: “There are certain kinds of people who are the lifeblood of democracy. Never wavering. Never faltering. Never straying in their pursuit of what matters.
“And what matters is honesty, facts, integrity, accuracy — truth.”
Good night, and good luck, indeed.
|
