Since taking the reins at CBS News, Bari Weiss has faced a chorus of criticism and second guessing. But one move stands out as particularly illogical: Eliminating the entire CBS News Radio operation. 

The division represented a mere drop in the bucket for the network’s overall broadcast budget. Also on the plus side, CBS News Radio was a 99-year-old institution that reached an estimated 20 million listeners a week — a far bigger audience than the network’s “Evening News With Tony Dokoupil,” which is lucky to surpass 4 million viewers.

Larry Magid, who worked for CBS News Radio for more than two decades before segueing to a contributor role in 2020 with his nationally distributed “The ConnectSafely Report,” was among the most recognized voices affected by the division’s dismantling.

“She definitely does not care about traditional media,” Magid says of Weiss. “She may care about podcasting. She may care about blogging. But it doesn’t strike me that she has a real understanding of the value of traditional broadcast.”

It is unclear if the division was eking out a small profit or hemorrhaging money. A New York Times story in March claimed (with thin attribution) that CBS News was “unprofitable,” according to “a person familiar with the company.” The Los Angeles Times also insisted that monthly revenues recently fell “as low as $67,000, according to a network executive not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.” But Magid believes the division was in the black.

“I’m told that it actually made some money, that it wasn’t a losing proposition,” he says“I’m told that it actually made some money, that it wasn’t a losing proposition,” he says. “Even if it made a dime, as a public service, to kill it, it doesn’t make sense.”

It made little sense to the some 70 staffers we told you about in March who sat through Weiss’ tone deaf speech that appeared to be cribbed from Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, the medium’s market share continues to impress. A Nielsen report from earlier this year found that “radio reaches 93% of all U.S. adults each month, making it the top-reaching media platform in the country.” The report noted the broad spread of car-bound listeners. “That reach extends across demographics, including 93% of Black consumers and 94% of Hispanic consumers,” the report stated. “Even among the hard-to-reach 18-34 audience, radio reaches 89% of the population.”

Magid, who recorded the final segment for CBS News Radio on May 22, was “devastated” by Weiss’ indiscriminate swing of the axe. But the veteran tech journalist quickly bounced back. By May 29, “ConnectSafely Report” — a twice-weekly, one-minute feature on online safety, privacy, security and AI (timely!) — returned through its new independent distribution network without missing a single episode.

Before CBS News Radio went dark, its affiliate manager called Magid and gave him the list of the stations that carried “ConnectSafely Report.” Many of them said, ‘Yeah, we want to continue, please send it to us,” Magid recalls.

Fifteen stations now carry the program in top markets like Boston, Chicago and Washington, and Magid says the list is growing. Even better, he is working from his home studio in the Bay Area, which is way more luxe than what Weiss had turned the CBS News Radio digs into months before it shuttered.

“Bari shrunk it to a room about the size of a small bedroom by the time they pulled the plug. It was tiny,” Magid says before comparing it to the grand pre-Weiss studio. “That was huge and was the newsroom that Walter Cronkite operated out of in the old days.”