Charles Osgood, a five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and host of “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades, hosted the long-running radio show “The Osgood File” and was known as CBS News. ‘poet in residence, he has died. He was 91 years old.
CBS reported that Osgood died Tuesday at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey, and that the cause was dementia, according to his family.
Osgood was a warm, erudite broadcaster with a talent for music who could write essays and light verse as well as report important news. He worked on radio and television with equal ease and signed off by telling listeners: “I’ll see you on the radio.”
«To say that 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 music to our lives. Truly, he was one of a kind from him, in every way.”
“CBS News Sunday Morning” will honor Osgood with a special broadcast on Sunday.
Osgood took over “Sunday Morning” after the beloved Charles Kuralt retired in 1994. Osgood seemingly had an impossible act to follow, but with his folksy erudition and slightly bookish, bow-tied style, he immediately clicked with viewers who continued to embrace the show as an unhurried TV revue.
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 landed an on-air position at ABC Radio in New York.
In 1967, he accepted a job as a reporter at the CBS-owned New York news radio station NewsRadio 88. Then, one fateful weekend, he was called to fill in at the anchor desk for the television network’s Saturday news show. In 1971 he joined CBS and launched what would become known as “The Osgood File.”
In 1990, he was inducted into the radio division of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. In 2008, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Broadcasters. He won four Emmy Awards and earned a fifth lifetime achievement honor in 2017.
Jane Pauley succeeded Osgood as host of “Sunday Morning,” becoming only the show’s third host.
When he retired in 2016 after 45 years of journalism, Osgood did so in very Osgood style.
“For years, people, including friends and family, have been asking me why I continue to do this, considering my age,” Osgood, then 83, said in brief closing remarks. “It has been a pleasure to do it! “It has been a great career, but after almost 50 years at CBS… the time has come.”
And then he sang a few melancholy bars of one of his favorite popular songs: “See you later, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. I have to drift.”
2024-01-23 21:14:23
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