You might not have realized it, since virtually no one these days listens to local radio stations anymore. But on August 25, 2024, WCBS Newsradio (880 on your AM dial) broadcast its final report, ending a continuous 57-year tradition of delivering news, traffic, weather and sports to residents in the New York Metropolitan area.
I have fond memories of listening to WCBS Newsradio. My parents were news junkies … and 880 was their medium of choice for getting the news. As I grew up in the late 1960s, breakfast meals always had the morning news in the background on the big radio in the kitchen. When my father drove us to school or took us on a family trip, he immediately turned the car radio on to 880. As a child in 1968, I distinctly remember when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, and my parents hovering around the radio to obtain the very latest news. Television news was certainly available at that time—Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley were all in their prime. Somehow the all-news station on the radio became the more immediate and more trusted source of news in our family.
The station began broadcasting as an all-news station in 1967, two years after WINS switched to an all-news format. These were pre-computer days, and the news was received on teletype machines in a wire room, which every radio station had. WCBS offered hundreds of stories written by news service reporters. Editors had to read through them all and type out headlines and scripts for the broadcasters on manual typewriters.
Its lead stories were delivered at the top of the hour, punctuated by staccato snare-drum beats. Then came traffic reports, and weather updates with the meteorologist Craig Allen. To New Yorkers, the features and names of the broadcast team became internalized mantras.
Being a sports fan, I was always interested in the out-of-town baseball scores, especially for the teams that competed with my favorite team, the New York Mets. WCBS methodically reported on the latest scores, 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after each hour. I’d often turn on the radio at that time on Sunday afternoons and weeknights, to get the latest scores. This was way before your cell phone could provide you on-demand, instantaneous results of the games in progress.
The latest weather was broadcast like clockwork every 10 minutes. I’m not a weather person, but there are a whole lot of people who are … and this was a great way that you could know the weather, no matter what time it was.
But my favorite part of the news station was always the traffic reports via the WCBS helicopter. Neil Busch and Lou Timolat were the two folks who manned the chopper back then—and reported on what the traffic was like on the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Long Island Expressway. As I recall, there always seemed to be a backup on at the Kosciuszko Bridge … no matter what time of day it was! The Midtown Tunnel was usually no better. Keep in mind that these were the days before Waze could redirect you based on traffic patterns. My dad was expert at finding alternate routes to avoid traffic, based on the reports he heard from the WCBS chopper.
Through the years, the helicopter crews were essential to the widening of live and on-scene coverage of all kinds of news. Tom Kaminski, who was hired in 1999 to man the 880 Chopper and report on traffic, famously reported about the terrorist attack on 9/11 from his helicopter.
He happened to be near the George Washington Bridge in his helicopter on the morning of September 11, 2001. He saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Tower One and reported on it immediately, at 8:48 a.m. When the second plane struck Tower Two, his helicopter had just surveyed the damage at Tower One and was still perilously close to the continued attack.
Kaminski also reported on the New York blackout in 2002, the Hudson River emergency landing in 2009, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 from the skies. Later in his career, he used the latest Internet technology to create a two-way street, sending pictures to his listeners via Twitter, while listeners experiencing traffic problems tweeted inquiries directly to Kaminski.
WCBS was part of the skyline of New York, one of the last vestiges of live radio on the AM dial that combined the personality of its reporters with the immediacy of the news. Today, if you listen to a podcast or check the news on your cell phone, you don’t get the words “This just in” or “We interrupt this broadcast,” like you used to get on 880.
WCBS 880 was also a staple for cab drivers for decades. Every cab had it on virtually all the time, because they had the traffic reports. And if it wasn’t on, passengers often asked the driver to turn on the radio to WCBS.
“It was the soundtrack to the city,” as one cabdriver described the station. “It helped keep me from falling asleep behind the wheel, and was really the only solace you had as a cabdriver. When you’re stuck in gridlock and you’re going out of your mind, the radio really calmed people down.”
For many New Yorkers, it was the first voice they would hear every day from their alarm clock. It speaks of how intimate and personal radio used to be, and how WCBS Newsradio played such an important part in people’s lives.
RIP, 880 Radio. You will be missed.
Michael Feldstein, who lives in Stamford, is the author of “Meet Me in the Middle” (meet-me-in-the-middle-book.com), a collection of essays on contemporary Jewish life. He can be reached at [email protected].
