Charles Osgood, who founded CBS Sunday morning For more than two decades he was the host of the long-running radio show osgood file, CBS News' resident poet has died. He was 91 years old.
Susan Plunkett/AP Photo
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Susan Plunkett/AP Photo
Charles Osgood, who founded CBS Sunday morning For more than two decades he was the host of the long-running radio show osgood file, CBS News' resident poet has died. He was 91 years old.
Susan Plunkett/AP Photo
Charles Osgood, a five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist who anchored “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades, hosted the long-running radio show “The Osgood File” and was referred to as CBS News' resident poet. , He died. He was 91 years old.
CBS reported that Osgood died on Tuesday at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey, and that the cause was dementia, according to his family.
Osgood was a knowledgeable and warm broadcaster with a penchant for music and who could write light articles and poetry as well as deliver hard news. He worked equally well on radio and television, signing off by telling listeners: “I'll see you on the radio.”
“To say there is no one like Charles Osgood is an understatement,” Rand Morrison, executive producer of “Sunday Morning,” said in a statement. “He embodied the heart and soul of ‘Sunday Morning.’ “…At the piano, Charlie put our lives to music. Truly, it was one of a kind – in every sense of the word.”
“CBS News Sunday Morning” will honor Osgood with a special broadcast on Sunday.
Osgood took over “Sunday Morning” after the retirement of beloved Charles Kuralt in 1994. Osgood seemed to have an impossible act to follow, but with his popular erudition and somewhat likeable style, he won over viewers who continued to embrace the program. The program as a late television magazine.
Osgood, who graduated from Fordham University in 1954, started out as a classical music DJ in Washington, D.C., served in the Army and returned to help start WHCT in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1963, he got an on-air position at ABC Radio in New York.
In 1967, he took a job as a reporter at CBS-owned NewsRadio 88 in New York. Then, one fateful weekday, he was called upon to fill the anchor desk for a Saturday network television newscast. In 1971, he joined CBS and launched what became known as “The Osgood File.”
In 1990, he was inducted into the Radio Section of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. In 2008, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Broadcasters. He has won four Emmy Awards, and was awarded a fifth award in 2017.
Jane Pauley succeeded Osgood as host of “Sunday Morning,” becoming only the program's third female host.
When he retired in 2016 after a 45-year career in journalism, Osgood did so in a very Osgood way.
“For years, people — even friends and family — have been asking me why I keep doing this, considering my age,” Osgood, then 83, said in brief closing remarks. “It's been a pleasure doing it! It's been a great run, but after nearly 50 years at CBS… it's time.”
Then he sang a few sad verses from a favorite ballad: “A long time ago, it was good to know you. I gotta move on.”
. “Professional creator. Lifelong thinker. Reader. Beer buff. Troublemaker. Evil problem solver.”