A 'Front Row Seat' to the News'

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Some of you who listen to the station also used to listen to the now defunct radio news station WCBS, which used to broadcast right down the AM dial from us at 8:80 AM. It's sometimes called itself News Radio 88 It was certainly known by the iconic call letters, WCBS, and so many drivers also knew very well that they did traffic and weather together every 10 minutes on the 8th, as they always put it. Two years ago, WCBS became a victim of the changing and increasingly more difficult business climate for any kind of news. Now the former news and program director of WCBS 880, Tim Scheld, has written a memoir of his time in radio news. He led the WCBS Newsroom, CIC.

W and I reflectively go NYC. He led the WCBS Newsroom for nearly 20 years, from 2003 until his retirement in 2022

There's a little sports radio in the book as well, as part of his job for a number of years was to be the executive producer of the New York Yankees radio broadcasts when WCBS was the station that aired their games, and he was also involved with Mets radio broadcasts when WCBS had those for some of his years. As it happens, Tim Scheld and I worked together briefly at WOR radio before I came here, and he went on to the rest of his work. He now teaches media in New Jersey at Montclair State. His new book is called My Front Row Seat, A Newsman's Journey. Tim, congratulations on the book, and welcome a few ticks down the dial to WNYC.

Tim Scheld (1:56)

Thanks, Brian. And it's a real pleasure to be on with you. And yeah, you remember how long ago that was, Brian? It was over 40 years that we were together, right?

Brian Lehrer (2:04)

That's right. I want to focus mostly on the end of your book, though, starting with your chapter on the end of WCBS. Listeners may not realize that the same company owned both of New York's all-new stations, WCBS 880 and 1010 WINS. Why was that? Was there a WCBS-type news radio listener and a 1010 WINS-type radio listener who the company programmed differently for?

Tim Scheld (2:31)

It's funny, Brian, that question was asked when the two companies came together about 20 years prior. As a matter of fact, Mel Carmisen, who is a big name in media, represented CBS radio when it merged with Westinghouse, another big company. Before Congress, he said, he was asked, why should one company own these two big radio stations? The answer was, they could serve different communities and do good for the community with two different audiences. That's how we lived for a while, but the radio audience was shrinking in the years that passed.

It just became too tenuous for that company to run both news organizations and they had to pick one, like a Solomon's Choice, had to pick one over the other, and it still hurts to this day.

Brian Lehrer (3:22)

Right. I know it hurts personally because so many people who you hired and reported to you for a long time, and you just knew for a long time. I knew some of them too, even working at another radio station, we would cross paths once in a while.

So it hurt personally to see so many people you knew lose their jobs. But you wrote that the company was more invested in keeping 1010 WINS over WCBS, partly because they thought it had more potential to attract a younger audience. Why was that if it did basically the same thing, news headlines around the clock with the bedrock for drivers of traffic every 10 minutes?

Tim Scheld (4:00)

Well, I think it didn't exactly do the same thing. I think WINS is very good at what they do, still to this day. They're a headline news service. They give you what you need in a short period of time. I think WCBS was the opposite. I think it gave a little bit of a deeper dive, not as deep as you do every day, and thankfully you're still here doing it as one of the best in the business. But there was a need for that deeper dive on the stories of the day. For example, there's some weather coming in, Brian, and news is weather, or the other way around. Weather is news. And people want to know what is going to be the impact of this more Easter if it hits communities with significant flooding and they want to know it ahead of time through a reliable and trustworthy voice. And that's what I think WCBS did and that's what's missing.