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CBS—THE BEST, THE LAMENTABLE, THE MIDDLING PART 1
I’VE KNOWN COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM, now a division of Paramount Global, at its best, its lamentable, and—first hand—its middling. Let’s briefly recount the best and middling of these and then focus on its most recent seemingly worst. We’ll do it in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow.
CBS Radio Workshop. As I noted back in “1489 Words—William Conrad and Jerry Goldsmith,” this exemplified CBS at its best: The CBS Radio Workshop series, originally broadcast from January 27, 1956 to September 22, 1957, was “dedicated to mans imagination: the theatre of the mind.”
I noted, “The workshop’s inaugural program was a two-part Brave New World, narrated by no less than the book’s author, Aldous Huxley. Other programs highlighted here at SimanaitisSays include ‘Unearthing the Weans,’ a light-hearted misanalysis of our civilization viewed from the year 7859, and a moving ‘Meditations on CBS Radio Workshop,’ with Edward R. Morrow’s commentary and composer Norman Dello Joio’s Meditations on Ecclesiastes.”
Edward R. Murrow, 1908–1965, American broadcast journalist.
What’s more, I recounted in the latter, “Many of the programs are available today through archive.com and are also scheduled on SiriusXM’s ‘Radio Classics.’ In addition to Meditations on Ecclesiastes, I especially like ‘Colloquy #1 – Interview with William Shakespeare.’ This is an entertaining romp with Dr. Frank C. Baxter, in his day job Professor of English, University of Southern California, chatting with eminent Elizabethans about who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays.”
There was also “Columbia Presents Corwin’s ‘The Undecided Molecule,’ ” a whimsical trial of particle physics featuring judge Groucho Marx.
Collectively, I rate these CBS presentations among the best of what’s called today “terrestrial broadcasting.”
My First-Hand R&T Middling. In “Me and The Suits,” I recounted, “The magazine became part of CBS Publications back in 1972. This was an era when Columbia Broadcasting System diversified into owning, among other things, Fender Guitar, Steinway Piano, Field & Stream, and Woman’s Day.”
I continued, “I don’t know whether CBS suits went fly-fishing with Field & Stream. But typically when New York City weather grew dreary, some suits would visit Newport Beach to learn more about cars other than yellow metered ones with lights on the roof.” They were cordial—and hardy—people; none ever got sick through the slalom.
Tomorrow in Part 2, we recount recent news that’s rather less laudable of CBS. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025
Simanaitis Says 
Add another CBS property to the good list. CBS Radio Mystery Theater on the air used to entertain me on my 1 hour commute after work at 7 PM (on the DC Beltway, in traffic…) in 1977-1978. Browse the episode guide of 1,399 Radio Mystery Theater episodes
Agreed, Tom. Other fine examples of CBS highs. Thanks for adding them.
Did they not also own Road&Track for awhile?
Thank you Tom and Dennis. The recent episodes of CBS cowering under the likes of Donald Trump, a coddled bubble boy, a 34-time felonious oaf from Queens unable to deliver adult speech nor answer coherently a direct question, having, as recounted by insiders Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil CEO, and four-star Marine General Jim Mattis, “the reading ability and understanding of a fifth- or sixth-grader,”
throwing first 60 Minutes, the finest single hour of commercial broadcasting, then Stephen Colbert, under the bus, are more than heartbreaking, but a national disgrace, given CBS’s long history of broadcasting excellence, integrity.
To think CBS was long home to the hilarious and often thought-provoking Steve Allen, the most civil, erudite, and funny What’s My Line, enduring sitcoms including the Honeymooners, Our Miss Brooks, Sergeant Bilko, the refreshing novelty of the Dick Van Dyke Show, dramas including the powerful Playhouse 90 and the father/son legal team of The Defenders, the latter an hour drama taking on once taboo subjects years, even a decade, before the rest of television, as did Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, and of course the fountain of respected journalism, vetted news and learned commentary from Edward R. Murrow and his producer, Fred W. Friendly (later with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism), Robert Trout, Eric Sevareid, Face the Nation, Roger Mudd, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Leslie Stahl, broadcasts including the powerful Harvest of Shame.
And now this. What CBS has become, their treatment of an educated, inquisitive late night host like Stephen Colbert, while not seemingly as wrenching a national trauma as the Kennedy assassination, or of JFK’s younger brother or that of Martin Luther King, will resonate, become such a vile landmark, not just in broadcast but our national history.
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