Not affiliated with CBS or its current owners, and is independent, sometime critical, often impertinent.
Edward R. Murrow died for our sins
 |  online history and archive
of this legendary CBS radio flagship station
edited by Don Swaim |
Anchors Lou Adler (left) Jim Donnelly (right) 1978. Photo courtesy Martin Hardee.
click to enlarge
"WCBS 880 has been one of the most respected radio stations in history," said Chris Oliviero, New York Market President, Audacy, "with a legacy cemented by the hundreds of world-class journalists, on and off the air, who willed it into existence over the decades. If it happened in New York or the world, you heard about it on WCBS 880."
Some of the Voluminous Listener Reaction to WCBS's Death: HERE
Go to AUDIO PAGE to hear:
• WCBS's FINAL BROADCAST. Aug. 25, 2024. Wayne Cabot has the very last word—and what a word! The silence that comes at the end is deafening.
• WCBS THROUGH THE YEARS Aug. 24, 2024. A special historical retrospective going back 100 years.
Brilliantly written and produced by David Plotkin. Lovingly hosted by Wayne Cabot and Paul Murnane.
• A SPECIAL FINAL 3-HOUR WCBS sign-off broadcast on Aug. 22, 2024 commemorating the end of WCBS. With Wayne Cabot, Bridgette Quinn, and Paul Murnane.
• WCBS ANCHOR RAY HOFFMAN BIDS FAREWELL on Aug. 27, 2024. View HERE
WCBS NEWSROOM NOW DARK
photo by Dennis Graiani
STAFFERS SAY GOODBY, Aug. 22, 2024
• Retrospective of WCBS on WNYC's "All of It" with Alison Stewart and Jerry Barmash.
LISTEN
|
CBS BOARD MEETS AGAIN The venerable CBS BOARD -- silent since the Pandemic and the death of "Board Chairman" Richard Lorenzo -- reconvened on Sep 7, 2024 at Chateau of Spain Restaurant, Newark, NJ. This time under the auspices of Michael Kahn.
Photo courtesy of Steve Scott
Click Photo to Enlarge
|
The "CBS Board," an informal coalition of broadcasters from all the networks, various radio and TV stations, plus print and PR, met regularly for several years until the Covid-19 epidemic closed the group, followed by the death of its longtime leader, Richard Lorenzo. The final meeting of the original team was on Saturday, November 2, 2019, in Teaneck, NJ. , where veteran CBS News, Radio, editor Larry McCoy regaled the gathering with anecdotes about the editing process.
More Photos from Nov. 2, 2019, luncheon, HERE
Latest copy of the CBS Board's newsletter, The New York Crimes, HERE
Photos from all recent luncheons HERE
___________________________________
|
__________ |
 |
__________ |
SHAMELESS WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
From S. T. JOSHI, winner of the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, British Fantasy awards
"DON SWAIM leads us through some of the most vivid events of the 1920s—from Al Capone's stranglehold on Chicago to murders in Hollywood to the stock market crash in a narrative that is as vibrant and rollicking as the decade he is portraying. And throughout, we are regaled by H. L. Mencken's nose-thumbing of politics, religion, and American culture in general. If you can only read one novel about the Roaring Twenties, this should be it."
Available From AMAZON
|
|
|
WCBS
MEMENTO GALLERY
A collection of WCBS souvenirs, program schedules, artifacts, pictures, posters, old ads, memorabilia, hats, clothes, kitsch, and just plain junk.
HERE
|
 Mitch Lebe, budding announcer
Joke! Joke! |
|
RITA SANDS' SCRAPBOOK(S)
|
Former WCBS anchor Rita Sands gives us dozens of candid, behind the scenes Newsradio88 snapshots from her own collection dating back to the 70s and 80s. They're presented here in slideshow form:
| |
|
|
__________ |
|
__________ |
CBS MOBILE UNIT, 1948Images are
from the 1948 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia on June 24. the vehicle was custom built on a truck chassis, an International Harvest Metro stepvan -- they were the most popular delivery vans in the country from their introduction in 1937 to their re-styling in 1963 -- allowing as many as four reporters and an engineer to work simultaneously. The bubble on top of the truck, just behind the cab, opens and allows two people to stand up and look out in all directions. Was it only used for the convention and the air races, then mothballed? By the 1952 conventions, it would have been easier to simply piggy-back the radio tech on the much larger TV trucks that were essential. And, of course, the big question -- what happened to it? Does it still exist? --Mike Hagerty, Sacremento
click to enlarge
|
|
BOOK BEAT Famed author Norman Mailer appears on Ohio University's "Wired for Books," 1991, one of more than 700 unedited Don Swaim interviews with the greatest writers of the 70s, 80s 90s, and preserved by Ohio University, which organized and posted the archive on the Internet. In addition, all of the broadcast's actual two-minute features, some 3,000 of them, are available as mp3 files at Book Beat: The Podcast. The archive narrowly escaped extinction, but, thanks to Ohio University and Wired for Books, is reaching fans and scholars in a way the original broadcasts could not do.
Cited by PC Magazine's "Best of the Internet" in November 2007.
|
click image to hear Mailer interview
|
|
A HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BUT AN AWKWARD START!
WCBS NEWSRADIO88 went on the air on Monday, August 28, 1967 -- just barely. The day before, a small airplane crashed into the station's transmitter tower on High Island in The Bronx, killing the two on board and silencing the station as well as WNBC.
But, as the clipping from Broadcasting Magazine at the time shows, WCBS limped into action on its then little-heard FM band. READ HERE
|
__________ |
|
__________ |
THE BARNES DANCE
Henry A. Barnes was one of the most colorful bureaucrats in New York City history. As Traffic Commissioner under two mayors in the 1960s he shook things up with innovative, often controversial schemes aimed at alleviating the city's over-crowded streets, such as "The Barnes Dance." This ill-fated effort allowed pedestrians on all four quarters of intersections to cross at the same time. When Barnes died in September 1968, WCBS Political Reporter Steve Flanders was on the air with an in-depth obit.
Listen: HERE
With appreciation to Mike McCann of WFAN/CBS Sports Radio for digging up this gem.
|
BLACK ROCK AND BRADLEY
EARLY DAYS AT WCBS WITH ED BRADLEY
An Irreverent Account by Don Swaim
click HERE to read
courtesy Bob VanDerheyden
SUPER SUMMERALL
Time Magazine
 click to enlarge
Football great Pat Summerall was the WCBS morning man just prior to all-news, after which he was the station's sports director. This ad was published in Time Magazine's New York City regional issue on April 7, 1967. (Thanks to John Landers for finding this.)
|
AN EIGHTH GRADER'S INTERVIEW WITH
JIM DONNELLY, 1973
by Larry B. Kling
Donnelly
I unearthed clips from an interview I did as a middle school student with [the late WCBS anchor] Jim Donnelly at Black Rock ca. 1973. You can hear the wonderful clatter of typewriters as he speaks to me in the old "88" newsroom.
The original recording was made on a Sony that was kin to the device WCBS's field reporters were using at the time.
I did the interview for a school report on the news media. Donnelly and I covered the waterfront, including discussing the story he found the toughest to put on the air (RFK's assassination, when Donnelly was still at WNEW-AM, where my grandfather, Dave Sohmer, worked as an engineer), the quest for objectivity amidst the rise of advocacy journalism (a trend he said bothered him a great deal), and radio's role as a source of news (and the high bar set by the WCBS news team to report with immediacy and accuracy).
I am struck today, as I was as a boy, by Donnelly's unshakable integrity. These clips convey why he is truly one of the great standard bearers of modern broadcast journalism.
Larry B. Kling, Highland Park, N.J., WCBS Newsradio listener since 1967
LISTEN
|
WCBS-FM PAGE
Dedicated to Newsradio 88's younger,
musical sibling
Go HERE
|
|
__________ |
|
__________ |
THROUGH THESE PORTALS...
Original Newsradio88 studios at 51 W. 52nd St.
Black Rock, 51. W. 52nd St.
A designated NYC landmark
_______________________________
site edited by Don Swaim
EMAIL
Special thanks to John Landers, Bob Gibson for their contributions
VISIT SOME OF DON'S OTHER SITES
WCBS Appreciation Site
Book Beat: The Podcast
Wired for Books
Radio Days
Aspinwall HS Class of 55
Ambrose Bierce Site
Bucks County Writers Workshop
Errata
Steinbeck in Bucks Co
Pennsylvania Sunsets
Growing Up in WW 2
Don's Houses: Where I've Been
Fighting the Hun in WW I
Official Stuart Cummings Ripley Site
Swaim Name in History
The Swaim in America
|
click on links below to open
|
WCBS "Art" Gallery
memorabilia
Behind Every Great Building...
The CBS Ediface
WCBS's Dave Atherton reads Poe
CBS LOGOS
Pre-1967 WCBS logo
|
|
|
|
click to enlarge
