The Other 4 in the Big 5 Radio Owners are Bold, Young and Aggressive. CBS Radio is Mature. CBS pays a regular dividend. CBS is your grandfather’s radio company. CBS doesn’t take risks. When you want Weather and Traffic on the 8s, you turn to CBS. Want to hear those hip songs from the 1960s again back when music was good? CBS is for you.
Not much had changed in the hallowed halls of CBS for 60 years. The Ghost of Bill Paley was calm. The Federal Government was protecting the CBS monopoly of legacy 50 kw clear channel stations from new people entering into the radio business.
Until the FCC started to relax the ownership limits, that is. First Westinghouse takes over CBS (but CBS and Westinghouse are very similar companies)
Then this young guy Mel Karmazin shows up one day with Howard Stern in tow (asking people about their flatulence and setting up dates between retarded young men and strippers, and sending men to the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel dressed up as Female Hookers) and the ever popular Don Imus from WFAN – and Infinity takes over Westinghouse/CBS overnight. Stuff Happens.
Viacom and Sumner Redstone arrive a few years later, and push out Mel and Howard – who flee to start Sirius Satellite Radio. Then Don Imus calls a female basketball team a bunch of “nappy headed hos”. Oh, The Humanity of it all.
CBS Radio is now returning itself back into the good old days of Walter Cronkite and Charles Osgood and trying to put the ghost of William Paley back to sleep.
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