The Long Way Home 4.3.26
CBS Radio Brings the News My longtime friend Kay (Uncle Kay) Carsten, when faced with changing circumstances, would consistently say, “Nothing stays the same, except rocks.” As a budding business tycoon, I loved it when he told me that. Now that I’m just a self-appointed observer, I find myself overly nostalgic about all the changes society has undergone since the 1950s. Recently, CBS News announced it is shutting down its radio news service next month after nearly a century of operation. The network was born in 1927 as United Independent Broadcasters. A young cigar entrepreneur, William S. Paley, took over in 1928 and renamed it the Columbia Broadcasting System. In the early years, radio didn't "do" news. They just read bulletins from the newspapers. CBS broke the mold in 1932 by ignoring a news embargo to report live on the Lindbergh kidnapping. Radio news was the social media of the middle part of the 20th Century. From the Roaring Twenties through a worldwide depre...