Nows and Forevers

Today is the first anniversary of losing a friend, WCBS Newsradio 88 in New York.

I know, it seems sad, saying I lost a friend in an inanimate object like a radio station. But what’s a radio station but made up of voices and the people behind them, keeping you company and telling you things, day and night, all year ’round? And this was especially connected to its audience. I loved it so much that no matter where I was, except for two years in San Diego, I listened to it whether it was the two-thirds of my life in New York or Connecticut, hearing it late at night or early in the morning thanks to its clear channel all over the East Coast, or via the Internet.

A year later, I still keenly feel the loss.

Why? WCBS was what I heard in the back seat when my dad was driving growing up. As a kid, I fell asleep to this station and woke up in the middle of the night, amazed that it was still on. (Those were the days when many TV and radio stations signed off.) And there wasn’t a big story between the late ’70s to this time last year that I didn’t turn to WCBS. ‘Course, it was even deeper than that. I got to know several people on WCBS, worked alongside their reporters in Connecticut and New York. And at least a little of my drive toward breaking news — some would say a compulsion — is because of WCBS.

I stayed up listening to the station all that Sunday night and I went outside and listened to the last 15 minutes in my car in the driveway. Wayne Cabot, the longtime anchor for WCBS, eased the station into its demise and it’s about as perfect an ending as you can imagine. I remembered most of the names and many of the bumpers and snippets called back many memories. By the time Wayne told about how he came to listen to the station as a kid — similar to my own story — it hit me hard. It was my Dad who brought me, at age 16, to the Manhattan headquarters of CBS News and WCBS on the personal invite of a legend, Douglas Edwards. That was the moment I decided I wanted to be a journalist.

Those final chimes and signoff and the silence at midnight, for the first time in 57 years, devastating.