Would you call it a habit if you can’t be in the car, driving, looking at the clock and see that it’s approaching the top of a new hour without feeling like you need to turn from music or talk or sports or whatever to hear the news from CBS Radio?
A compulsion?
Is it like going outside, no matter the weather, for decades, to get the newspaper off the driveway? Or turning on CNN Headline News once upon a time at :19 and :49 after the hour to get sports scores?
But this one has lasted longer. And it felt like it would last forever.
For me, it’s been the case for as long as I’ve been a commuter. It probably started driving to my first internship 35 years ago and it continued as I racked up the miles driving to and from newsrooms, offices, client locations, carpool stops, errands and, most comforting, the ride from the airport to home whenever traveling.
That’s many thousand tight, clear, accurate news reports from CBS Radio and the anchors whose voices brought the right power to the right words: Frank Settipani, Christopher Glenn, Nick Young, Steve Kathan, Deborah Rodriguez and so many more.
It’s the sounder, timed so dependably you could set your clock to it, as well as trust the news coming behind it.
Then, in February, a dream come true: My first, and as it would turn out, only appearance on the CBS Radio “hourly” newscast.
A few weeks later, CBS announced it was getting out of the radio business. No more stations of its own, as it sold those in 2017. And now, after 99 years, there will be no more CBS Radio News, as of the end of this week, at the top of the hour or ever.
The reasons are numerous and obvious. The audience is aging and new audiences are getting information other ways, even, or maybe especially, those not as reliable in any way, let alone every way.
I earned my first radio paycheck from CBS 34 years ago. It meant so much to me that I photocopied it before I deposited it. So it’s easy to get sentimental during a week like this. But I’m thinking of the bigger picture and I wish I had a clearer answer for you to this question:
Will your media habits survive?
Think about what you count on to watch, listen to or read. Think about your favorite personalities or even platforms. How many will last 99 years? Or 35 years? Or 5 years?
Media habits have been some of our most healthy of all. OK, having to change the station in case something new happened in the past 57 minutes may be extreme. But think about how you have been enriched by counting on media, which is now in the midst of accelerating change.
Whatever it is, enjoy it while you can.