News Radio Provides News, Weather, Traffic and More across the Country

Radio programmer, Gordon McLendon, is widely considered the first to successfully implement a 24 hour All News Radio Program, in the mid 1960’s. The program’s format (Still used today) started every hour with 30 minutes of national and international news, locally anchored news, sports highlights, business news, and special features. Originally, all news radio stations accessed news from the Associated Press (AP), and United Press International (UPI) agencies, and had no field reporters. Today, all news radio – more commonly referred to as news/talk radio – features segments of local, national, and international news, with field coverage, as well as frequent Traffic Reports, Weather updates, Business coverage, Sports highlights, and a variety of specially programmed segments.

Three of the most prominent News/Talk Radio stations serving the U.S. are CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), and ABC News Radio. Each station can reach listeners with national and international news, but also local coverage for their specified region. CNN news radio features a live feed from the CNN national broadcast, allowing listeners the most up to date news information. ABC News Radio broadcasts through affiliates across the country, and provides listeners with updates ‘wherever and whenever’ news happens. The NPR is available across the country through hundreds of local radio broadcasts – reaching millions of listeners with news and talk programming. All three stations (and many more like it) invite listeners to tune in online, or visit their websites to download pod casts of popular news and talk programs for their portable media devices.

In a world where palm pilots and cellular phones seem able to do anything we desire, it is surprising that News/Talk radio’s popularity has yet to decline. News radio provides listeners with the ability to access news on the go – local, national, or international, as well as sports highlights, weather updates, and talk programs designed around health issues, financial concerns, and other topics of interest. All news radio formats have been extremely successful in large cities across the country, where downtown traffic is making work days last longer and longer. Stations that offer constant traffic updates every ten minutes provide listeners with the ability to think ahead, plan their route, and avoid the headache of inner-city five o’clock gridlock.

From news reports, traffic and weather updates, to talk programs like “Talk of the Nation”, a public affair call-in program hosted by the NPR, news/talk radio is cost effective, accessible (both by radio, and online), and diverse. With programming for listeners of all ages, news/talk radio is a staple in American Broadcasting.