One of the country's largest local news radio stations, WCBS Newsradio 880 in New York City, signed off for the last time on Monday, Aug. 26.
The longstanding AM station will drop its iconic call letters, shifting to WHSQ, and flip to ESPN New York sports radio. The change marks the end of nearly six decades for WCBS as a trusted news source for the tri-state area. The station's parent company, Audacy, cited the ongoing challenges in the news industry as the reason for the change.
As WCBS closes this chapter, morning news co-hosts Wayne Cabot and Paul Murnane spoke with Connecticut Public’s “Morning Edition.”
On learning WCBS was ending
Cabot: I was on Cape Cod on vacation in my flip-flops and shorts.
Murnane: I told Wayne, in the phone call right after the meeting that they pulled us into, that it felt like floating in space. It’s amazing to work at an AM radio station, which is considered to be, in 2024, kind of at the bottom of the food chain with things; there's been thousands. I think, thousands [of messages] ... and I've decided that my first day of retirement will feel like I'm working. I want to sit down and go through the messages and say thank you to everyone for their kind words.
The early days of listening (and learning) from WCBS
Cabot: Honestly, and I think Paul, you'll echo this; our real on-the-job training came long before we had the job, and that was as listeners. I started on New Jersey radio. I worked in Philadelphia for a while, and then I've been here for the last 37 years.
Murnane: I grew up in Connecticut. I worked in Connecticut stations. I worked in Rhode Island. I worked in Boston. I could, at any of those workplaces, go down after my work shift and get in my car and listen to 880 and that gigantic signal. I agree, listening to the station was kind of a little on-the-job training.
Memorable stories
Murnane: There have been so many. There are big stories and small stories. Of course, 9/11. To think that 9/11 and the aftermath that our listeners and our employees witnessed, I consider it to be a miracle that those firefighters, the police officers, were climbing the stairs of the towers as those towers were falling apart and they were trying to their very last to save lives. I can't get that out of my head.
Cabot: Also to see the documentaries years later, showing people on the street as the cloud of dust is making its way through Lower Manhattan, listening to the radio and hearing our voices come back, and people are glued. They're leaning in. They wanted to know what was happening. It's very often when you're in this booth by yourself, you don't know if you're talking to a wall, but when you see the impact of the information you're putting out there has on people, it makes you sit up and redouble your efforts to be responsible and to recognize the impact you're having on people.
Murnane: That's what hurts about all this, is that you're talking to two men who really love radio news and love doing it. It's so important, and I'm so grateful I chose radio news for a career and was able to be here.
Cabot: I'm going to miss working with this guy. We just have fun all morning long. We actually enjoy each other's company, and I think that's what made it work for so long.
On the WCBS legacy
Murnane: I think our departure leaves the radio band, the AM radio band, a more harsh place. I wonder if future generations will remember that there was a time when there was a real human voice that was talking to the listener, and the listener felt that that person was watching out for them. Nothing replaces a warm, genuine human radio voice, in real-time, and people are going to look at their screens of their phones, and they're going to see, you know, a push notification; news is not a push notification. I think that words on a screen, on a little piece of glass in your hand, don't have the impact of having a real person tell you something.
