Media

CNN -  For more than a century, Americans have been turning to a trusted and reliable source for local news: the radio. Now, the terrestrial broadcasts are facing an existential threat as listeners and advertising dollars rapidly shift, forcing stations to slash staff and even sign off the air for good.

This week, one of the nation’s biggest local news radio outlets, New York City’s WCBS 880 AM, announced it would sign off by the end of the month, ending a nearly six-decade run as a local news source for the five boroughs and beyond. The station’s parent company, Audacy, blamed the challenges facing the news business for the decision, saying it plans to replace WCBS’s current all-news format with ESPN sports talk programming.

“New York has always been proudly unique in supporting two all-news radio brands, but the news business has gone through significant changes,” Chris Oliviero, Audacy’s New York Market president, said in a statement. “The headwinds facing local journalism nationwide made it essential to strategically reimagine how we deliver the news for the most impact.”

Across the dial in New York, staffers at WNYC news radio learned Wednesday that the station will cut its staff by at least 8% next month — its second such reduction in a year — as it scrambles to contend with a free fall in advertising dollars....

In June, San Francisco-based KQED, one of the nation’s largest public media organizations, closed an offices and laid off 34 staffers amid belt-tightening. The following month, Los Angeles-based Southern California Public Radio reported it had slashed 17% of its staff amid a seven-figure budget shortfall.

“The traditional financial models just don’t work anymore,” Southern California Public Radio chief content officer Kristen Muller wrote in an email to listeners. “Most advertising dollars that once supported us are now heading to giant tech platforms like Facebook and Google, resulting in a significant drop in sponsorship revenue — a tough pill to swallow.”

The existential threat to the radio business model comes as listeners abandon terrestrial broadcasts in favor of on-demand podcasts and streaming services, part of a larger digital reckoning that has forced widespread layoffs across some of the nation’s largest media companies.