All-news radio

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For the television series NewsRadio, see NewsRadio.

All-news radio is a radio format devoted entirely to discussion and broadcast of news.

All-news radio is available in both local and syndicated forms, and is carried in some form on both major US satellite radio networks. Some all-news stations, like KYW and WCBS, carry sports, and all-news stations may occasionally carry public affairs programs, simulcasts of TV news magazine or political affairs shows like 60 Minutes and Face the Nation. Some former all news stations, like KNX and WBZ, now run talk radio programs on weekends and during off peak hours. Most of these stations are owned by CBS Radio, and therefore are affiliated with the CBS radio network.

Many stations brand themselves Newsradio but only run continuous news during the morning and afternoon drive times. These stations are properly labeled as "news/talk" talk radio stations. Also, some National Public Radio stations identify themselves as News and Information stations, which means that in addition to running the NPR news magazines like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, they run other information programs such as Day to Day, Talk of the Nation, and the BBC World Service.

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[edit] History

According to a Wikipedia site for 1100 KFAX radio in San Francisco, Calif., what had been KJBS radio changed to KFAX in late 1959 when the station changed formats from music, news, and sports, to become the nation's first all-news radio station. However, this experiment proved unsuccessful.

Broadcasting pioneer Arthur W. Arundel is credited with creating the first 24-hour All News station, radio or television, in the United States in January 1961 on his owned and operated WAVA in Washington. The station’s success was largely driven by a Nation’s Capital audience then riveted to news of the Vietnam War and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Arundel helped other stations in New York and Chicago also to convert to his All News All the Time format and then met direct competition from Washington Post-owned WTOP in 1964.

Another early prototypical all-news format was in use by WABC-FM in New York during the 114-day newspaper strike which lasted from December 8, 1962 to March 31, 1963. The format only lasted as long as the strike, though, and reverted to its regular format of Broadway show tunes and simulcasting of its AM sister station after the strike ended.

Radio programmer Gordon McLendon, who has been credited with pioneering top 40, background music and telephone talk formats, is generally acknowledged to have put the first all-news format on the air. It happened in the 1960s on XETRA, a station licensed to Tijuana, Mexico, that could be heard as far away as Los Angeles, and also on WNUS in Chicago.

Its format, which can be heard to this day on many all-news stations, was to start each half hour with world and national news, preferably from a network, then switch to locally-anchored area news, filling out the half hour with sports, business news and features. XETRA had no outside reporters and got all of its local news from the AP and UPI wire services.

Group W, the broadcast division of Westinghouse, adopted a second kind of all-news format, using 20-minute rather than 30-minute cycles that eschewed network newscasts so that local and non-local news could be freely mixed, according to what was more interesting or important on any given day. Westinghouse also used field reporters at its all-news stations, which included WINS New York and KFWB Los Angeles. WINS began broadcasting in April 1965. A second New York all-news station, WCBS began all-news programming on August 28, 1967, although its first broadcasts were on its sister FM station after a plane crashed into its tower, knocking the AM station off the air.

In 1975, the NBC Radio Network shut down its profitable weekend music and information service NBC Monitor to launch the News & Information Service (NIS), the first all-news radio network. It was closed two years later in a cost-cutting move though it had strong ratings in some key markets.

In the mid-1990s a similar effort to NIS was launched by the Associated Press. It was officially known as AP All-News Radio and had many affiliates from coast to coast. However, it was informally better known by its promotional title of "The News Station." The Associated Press discontinued the all-news format in July 2005.

The last national all-news radio service in the United States, the audio feed of CNN Headline News, is being phased out by Westwood One as of 2007. Headline News's audio feed was popular among all-news stations, particularly after the AP disbanded their format in 2005, until the TV station decided to abandon its all-news format and add talk show programming in prime time, when many smaller stations do not have air staff and rely on a network feed, in 2006. Only a limited number of affiliates remain as many have become talk radio stations.

While not a full-time NIS, the CBS Radio Network provides significant content for many, if not most, all-news radio stations in the United States, especially local stations in smaller markets.

All-news has for years been a top-rated radio format in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities, but as big city traffic worsens and people work longer hours that increase the urgency of planning their day ahead the focus of such stations has increasingly been on traffic and weather, often updated every 10 minutes. Attempts at long-form commercial all-news stations, such as Washington Post Radio, have been largely unsuccessful.

[edit] Stations

[edit] All-news stations in the United States

Note: All are owned by CBS unless otherwise noted

[edit] All-news stations in Australia

[edit] All-news stations in Canada

Note: All are owned by Rogers Broadcasting unless noted

News-talk radio station 570 News in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario (also a Rogers Broadcasting owned station) uses an all-news wheel for its morning show, simulating its sister station 680 News in Toronto.

In February 2001, Corus Entertainment launched an all-news sister station to Vancouver news-talk station CKNW. All news NW2 (CJNW AM730, formerly CKLG) was branded as "24 hour news radio, powered by CKNW." NW2 shared newsroom resources with CKNW, including several anchors and reporters. However, NW2 did not achieve broad appeal, and was shut down in May 2002. The station currently airs an all-traffic format under the call sign CHMJ.

[edit] All-news stations in Europe

For a near-complete list of News/Talk radio stations, see Category:News and talk radio stations

[edit] See also

[edit] External links