Fifth Annual AIDS Conference In Montreal – With a Jumbo Helping Of Protest.

Continuing our look at CBS Radio News throughout the years.

Newsmark was probably one of the last “Golden Era” documentary series done by the network, and it was a memorable one.

CBS Radio’s Newsmark was one of those highly respected but now largely forgotten network radio features that flourished during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, during a period when the major radio networks were still investing serious resources in long-form journalism and documentary production.

Rather than being a conventional daily newscast, Newsmark was a recurring CBS Radio public affairs/documentary series. It generally focused on in-depth reporting, human-interest features, and international or social issues that could not be fully explored in the network’s standard hourly news format. In many ways, it served as the radio equivalent of the more thoughtful television magazine pieces seen on programs like 60 Minutes, though in a shorter and more audio-driven form.

The series emerged during an era when the CBS Radio Network still maintained a substantial national and international news operation. By the 1980s, CBS Radio affiliates across the country relied heavily on the network not only for “News on the Hour” updates, but also for packaged reports, correspondent actuality cuts, and feature programming. CBS News Radio had one of the strongest reputations in broadcast journalism, tracing its lineage back to the legendary wartime reporting of Edward R. Murrow and the famed World News Roundup.

Ironically, first starting out as a monthly feature, it went the other way and became a weekly feature.

This particular episode deals with the 5th annual AIDS Conference which went on in Montreal in 1989. It then switches over to a post-mortem of sorts on the Tiananmen Square protests, which happened only days earlier. And the last segment features Charles Osgood with a piece on The Gulf Stream.

Remarkable Radio during a period of time the writing was on the wall suggesting otherwise.

Stay tuned.