Jeff Glor to Anchor Radio Newscast

CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor tweets that he will revive an old tradition: Starting next week he will anchor the 5:00 p.m. ET CBS Radio Network Newscast.

Nice! I heard Lester Holt doing the same thing for NBC News Radio in 2013-14, on weekend evenings. This was prior to the Westwood One switch.

NewsStud said:

CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor tweets that he will revive an old tradition: Starting next week he will anchor the 5:00 p.m. ET CBS Radio Network Newscast.

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In the early 2000s, when Tom, Dan and Peter were still leading the nightly newscasts, Peter Jennings started anchoring the 5PM ET ABC I-Net hourly.

Shortly thereafter, CBS responded and Dan Rather picked up anchoring the 5PM CBS newscast.

Peter Jennings was never very good at it, which was surprising, as he had a radio background. He had a hard time with the timing (I'm sure someone wrote the newscast for him, which was probably part of the problem). Additionally, he cross promoted World News Tonight (and himself) which cut a little content out of the 2-minute newscast (the outcue was something like "I'll see you on World News Tonight, I'm Peter Jennings and you're listening to ABC News)." Then after the break, he'd hand it off to the on duty announcer with "I'm Peter Jennings, ABC News continues now with Cheri Preston."

Meanwhile, Dan Rather, in comparison was a rock star. Big voice, good delivery, knew what to do with his voice to keep your attention on the radio. And when he hit the outcue, he did it in a way that sounded big, and sounded important. Unlike Jennings, he anchored the whole five minute newscast.

As Jennings worked less and less, whoever filled in on World News Tonight would cover the newscast. Charles Gibson sounded great. David Woodruff was okay. But Elizabeth Vargas had an awful voice and was tough to listen to. After Jennings passed, ABC quietly discontinued having the WNT anchor do the 2PM newscast.

Meanwhile, over at CBS, Rather continued to anchor until he was shoved out. During the Schieffer interim-period, the scheduled radio anchor would cover the newscast. When Katie Couric was announced, it was listed that part of her duties would include the 5PM ET newscast. She did it for a week, maybe two, and it was awful. Go find a Katie Couric CBS Evening News on youtube, close your eyes, and listen to her voice. It's nasal and grating. Somehow, on the Today Show, where the show was conversational, it wasn't an issue. But she sounded awful trying to do a newscast on TV, and especially on radio. She had no cadence or rhythm on the radio and after about two weeks, CBS pulled the plug, and that was basically the last time the Evening News anchor did the 5PM on the radio.

Jeff Glor sounded decent tonight. The only issue was there wasn't an "I'm Jeff Glor" at the newscast open. Not sure if CBS intended to use a different voiceover intro "CBS News On The Hour with Jeff Glor" but accidentally ran the standard "CBS News On The Hour" voiceover instead, or what, but he hit his mark and didn't flub a line otherwise.

A big difference between then and now is that CBS and ABC owned their own radio networks with dedicated distribution through their owned and operated stations. That is no longer the case for either one. Further, neither Glor nor Muir have the stature that Jennings and Rather had. I could tolerate Pelley, but moved to NBC after trying to give Glor a chance. He just falls flat to me.

umfan said:

A big difference between then and now is that CBS and ABC owned their own radio networks with dedicated distribution through their owned and operated stations.

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Then being 2005? No, CBS Radio Network had long ago (mid 80s, I think) been divested to Westwood One. But CBS Radio News was and always has been produced by CBS News, and did indeed air on its owned stations like WCBS, WBZ and KYW.

ABC Radio was still a part of ABC when Peter Jennings died, but not for long after.

That is not correct, to my knowledge. CBS had O&O's and produced it's own news until divesting the stations last year. It was CBS Radio News which carried Rather and now carries Glor.