CBS News announced it is laying off dozens of employees on Friday and ending CBS News Radio – its nearly 100-year-old radio service – as part of a strategic restructuring.
The news was announced in a memo to staffers from its editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, and president, Tom Cibrowski. Employees will be informed by the end of the day if their job has been affected, the two executives said in the memo.
The cuts are expected to affect 6% of a roughly 1,100 person staff, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Earlier reports had put the cuts at closer to 15%.
The CBS News Radio team and about 700 affiliated stations were informed that the radio service will end on 22 May 2026.
“We recognize that this is a difficult time for those who will be leaving CBS News,” Weiss and Cibrowski wrote. “Because these aren’t just names on a list. They are talented, committed colleagues who have been critical to our success. We’ll treat them all with care and respect.”
The executives put the cuts in the broader context of the changing media business.
“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it,” Weiss and Cibrowski wrote. “New audiences are burgeoning in new places, and we are pressing forward with ambitious plans to grow and invest so that we can be there for them. That means some parts of our newsroom must get smaller to make room for the things we must build to remain competitive.”
Weiss opened the network’s 9am editorial call by explaining to employees how the cuts will work and emphasizing that “this is really hard and really tough”.
“The most important thing that I want to say to everyone in this newsroom, and in particular to the people that are going to be affected today, is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of your work and the way you have poured your heart and soul into this organization,” Weiss said, according to an audio recording of her remarks obtained by the Guardian. “It simply has everything to do with the times we are living in, and the way that this industry perhaps more than any other industry is being just transformed.”
“We are here to support you today, and we are here to support you beyond today. I promise you,” Cibrowski said on the call. “In the meantime, you will have questions, and we are here to answer them to the best of our ability. But let’s respect the process of today as it begins.”
Still, that did little to calm the nerves of employees. “Mood’s not great here lol,” one staffer, who was not authorized to comment, told the Guardian.
The cuts follow an earlier round of layoffs in late October – described at the time as a “blood bath” – that came just weeks after Weiss began her tenure atop the newsroom. In contrast, Weiss was more directly involved in the planning for Friday’s cuts, along with Cibrowski.
The network has also lost several key staffers through buyouts – offered to the staff of the CBS Evening News – and some notable resignations, including the prominent justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane earlier this month, who said he planned to go the independent route.
The network’s most-watched show, 60 Minutes, suffered a blow when correspondent Anderson Cooper – also a CNN primetime anchor – announced last month that he would not continue with the program.
Shuttering CBS News Radio was a “necessary decision” but it “not an easy one”, Weiss and Cibrowski said in a memo. “A shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities, has made it impossible to continue the service.”
The network traces its roots back to 1927 and hosted broadcast legend Edward R Murrow’s second world war reports from London. Its signature broadcast, CBS World News Roundup is the longest-running newscast in the country.
Friday’s cuts are the second since Skydance Media acquired CBS News parent company Paramount in August. Even more cuts are expected when Paramount Skydance acquires CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros Discovery, pending regulatory approval. Paramount has said that the merger could result in $6bn in cost savings.
Weiss and Cibrowski acknowledged that the timing of the cuts is particularly difficult, considering that the network’s journalists are busy covering a burgeoning war in Iran and the global fallout from it.
“This is a tough message to receive at any time, and especially in the middle of an exceptionally intense news cycle,” they wrote.
After talking about the layoffs at the beginning of the morning meeting, Weiss pivoted to discussing the news of the day. “Let’s start with the war, if we could.”
