CBS Radio News out; City Paper in; Post-Gazette still awaiting cliff
March 20, 2026The media landscape sure has changed, or is in the process thereof, in drastic ways recently. And we thought the early 2000s were bad with all of the mergers and acquisitions. That, my friends, was just the beginning.
This morning, RadioInsight reports CBS News Radio will cease operation on May 22, 2026 leaving stations such as Audacy-owned KDKA-AM (1020; W261AX 100.1) and Renda-owned WDAD-AM (1450; W262CU 100.3 Indiana) to find new affiliations. The move also lays off about 6% of CBS’s work force.
It puts the last nail in the coffin of CBS News Radio – the only division that was maintained after CBS Radio sold all of their stations to Entercom in 2017. Entercom later became Audacy. The network has been in operation for nearly a century having started as United Independent Broadcasters in 1927 predating the purchase from Columbia Records just months later.
If there is any good news, Pittsburgh’s City Paper is making a comeback after a brief death. The Tribune-Review reported Thursday that a deal is in place allowing the free resource to be published under new ownership.
Block Communications announced the immediate closure of the paper on December 31, 2025, just a few weeks before the company announced the May 3, 2026 closure of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Ali Trachta will resume her role as Executive Editor. Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Local Matters holds the majority owner of the for-profit Pierogi Press LLC who is the paper’s operator. A spokesman for Pierogi Press did not disclose the purchase price to The Trib, but did say the terms of the deal reflect a recognition the dollars Block Communications receive “are not going to the longevity and the kind of funding necessary to see City Paper to a successful place.
The new City Paper will restore its online presence and publish a monthly print issue.
Meanwhile, despite efforts to save it, the Post-Gazette is still on track to shut down completely on May 3. Recent television news reports showed video of workers taking the sign off the North Side headquarters at 358 North Shore Drive. (Ironically, the logo remains on their long-time downtown home at 34 Blvd of the Allies.) Records show the paper has been running operations from 300 Corliss Street – also the long time address of Comcast Cable and its predecessors – in Sheraden.
Unfortunately the demise of CBS News Radio is fallout from the anticipated Paramount-WB merger. If it’s not a core business and isn’t growing, get rid of it! If you still want to hear some of old CBS radio sounders, catch them on youTube files covering the last hour of WCBS News 88.
I take it the “changing media landscape” is in reference to the Nexstar-Tegna deal being finalized last night that effectively lets one company own three TV stations in the same market now? It doesn’t directly affect Pittsburgh, but it does open up the door for consolidation down the road. Imagine CBS unloading KDKA-TV & KDKA+ to Hearst (that’ll never happen) or Sinclair buying WTAE-TV (again, won’t happen) or WPXI (that one is actually pretty realistic)–Sinclair already tried (or is still trying) to buy Scripps, which would give them WINP-TV. OTA TV is gonna turn into radio where it’ll be two or three clusters.
I’m waiting to see the after effects of the Nexstar-Tegna deal in Columbus. Nexstar already owned WCMH-TV and has now acquired WBNS-TV. If not for March Madness I would be watching WBNS’s “10TV” newscasts and waiting to see the distinctive Nexstar copyright at the end. I will give Nexstar credit, in Youngstown they do present WKBN-TV & WYTV as distinct newscasts despite the fact the two stations merged back in 2007, over a decade before Nexstar took them over.
Sad to hear about the end of historic CBS Radio News. They pretty much wrote the book on how to do world broadcast news during World War II. William L. Shirer, Edward R. Murrow, Douglas Edwards, et. al. I suppose somebody could purchase the CBS name and do a rebrand, much like how there is an NBC Radio News out there, a quarter-century after the real NBC pulled the plug, which I think is a rebranded form of CNN. But it won’t be the same.