The author is a broadcast technology consultant who, most recently, was CTO of WAMU in Washington, DC. He was previously market chief for CBS Radio New York and began there as an engineer at WCBS 880.
One of the questions hosts Paul Murnane and Wayne Cabot were asking guests in their final special was “What do you think is the legacy of WCBS?”
As I try to answer that for myself — particularly from the lens of someone who worked there — I think I’m more focused on what WCBS meant as an organization.
At its best, WCBS was probably the healthiest and strongest culture of any organization I’ve ever been a part of. And what’s fascinating is that consistently great leadership and strong esprit-de-corps don’t seem to be tied to a particular GM or on-air personality.
Somehow, near everybody exemplified it. While most people there worked to uphold high standards, those standards seemed to sort of organically evolve and emanate from the station itself. That’s rare in any organization, let alone a radio station. No one needed to tell WCBS staff to be great at what they did. They just were. And they genuinely cared about one another and supported each other.
Many former staff have talked about growing up listening to the station and long family histories of the station being part of their lives. I can almost understand that if this station was figural in your life from an early age, that it would develop a certain level of reverence for you and elicit a certain performance.
For me, however, the child of “N.J. transplant” parents, I had never listened to the station before I worked there (gasp!). I knew the call letters and I knew that it did news, but I think that was more because I was a student of radio.
However, when I walked through those doors of the CBS Broadcast Center in 2005 ,and up to the newsroom on the 8th floor, I instantly felt it. There was a sense of shared excellence and commitment. Sometimes this can take an unhealthy bent in media, but, as best I could tell, this place was driven *and* healthy.
Anecdotally, I’d venture to guess there is a higher rate of divorce among those who work in the media business. A lot of folks take these incredible stresses home. While I don’t know exact stats, and certainly there were divorces, I think there was (by media standards) an exceptionally high rate of stability in the home lives of the staff of WCBS. If my perceptions are accurate, that’s an unusual data point.
So the station simultaneously elicited excellence from its employees while also allowing them to be full human beings — with each other at work, and with their families and loved ones outside of work.
In fact, if anything, I think being around so many intelligent and self-actualized people helped us each to grow and become smarter and more self-actualized. It was fascinating.
As strong as the station was on the air, and as reliable as the newsroom was, it was supported by a sales army that was perhaps even more driven and prouder of the product they sold than the folks who produced it (which is saying a lot).
The pride they had in that product couldn’t be simple training. They brought in tens of millions of dollars every year because of that pride, and in getting clients to believe in the station as well (and of course, in delivering results for them). It was a high-class station for a smart audience, represented by educated, classy people.
As CBS prepared for radio’s divestiture, and in the years since, the resources the station once had were slowly peeled away (I was among them). I have no idea what it was to work there in the past eight years, but I can tell you that there were still strong markers of that pride and exceptional work right up to the station’s final days.
I will always be grateful for the role that WCBS played in my own journey. It made me grow and evolve in ways I could have never anticipated when I walked through the doors of the Broadcast Center on April 5, 2005. I, too, strove for excellence without anyone needing to tell me to. We built that final newsroom with a degree of love and attention to detail that I’ve never seen in another station.
“I’m proud to have been part of it. And I hope the station’s final 13 years were better because of the space and technology we created.”
While it’s sad that it’s gone now, I have to say that the world is stronger for WCBS having existed. Not only for the decades spent serving the audiences of the New York region, but because all of those exceptional professionals who have been part of it over all these years are now out in the world. Like hundreds of points of light … all out there … who have or will go on to do something remarkable with the spirit that was nurtured in them at WCBS.
I had already decided what my next journey was going to be before the news of WCBS’ demise, and while I’m not quite ready to share those details publicly, I can tell you that the spirit of WCBS will certainly live within them.
Thank you, WCBS, and everyone who ever made it what it was. We are better for having been there together, and I hope we go on to build organizations that can embody what we learned to be possible in the halls of Black Rock, the Broadcast Center and 345 Hudson Street.
