Not affiliated with CBS or its current owners, and is independent, sometime critical, often impertinent.

Edward R. Murrow died for our sins

Col 1
online history and archive
of this legendary CBS radio flagship station

edited by Don Swaim
Lou Adler * Jim Donnelly
Anchors Lou Adler (left) Jim Donnelly (right) 1978. Photo courtesy Martin Hardee.
click to enlarge




original call letters
more than you need to know about

WCBS
ON THE AIR!
History & Times
of a Legendary Radio Station

HERE







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 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
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    		•

    Long suppressed by sinister forces at CBS and its accomplices within the federal government, this tell-all chronicle is posted in full on the Internet for the first time as a pdf file. Previously available only in a limited-print edition, it may now be read by all, despite the threat of physical violence and legal action by CBS.

    TO READ CLICK HERE


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    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!




    Part memoir, part history, this is the incredible
    story of Newsradio 88's helicopter fleet and its pilots

    THE DAYS OF WILBUR & ORVILLE
    1960s-era photo of the WCBS traffic helicopter fleet, flown by Bob Richardson and a rotating crew of pilots (who called themselves on the air Wilbur and Orville). Before All-News began in 1967. Read Rita Sands' illuminating history of the Newsradio88 traffic choppers and its pilots: HERE.
    Photo courtesy of John Landers.


    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, 1948
    Images 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



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    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

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    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

  • CBS Radio at 80
    American Heritage.com
  • WCBS Radio's EKKO
    Radio Verification Stamps
  •
  • 1980s News88 TV Spot
    Quicktime Video
  • Rita Sands
    Photo Album One
  • WCBS "Art" Gallery
    memorabilia
  • Behind Every Great Building...
    The CBS Ediface

  • WCBS's Dave Atherton reads Poe

  • Memories of WCBS
    Personal Recollections


















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    Pre-1967 WCBS logo