Charles Osgood, the wisecracking CBS News journalist who led “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades — a longer tenure than the show’s original host, Charles Kuralt — died Tuesday at 91 after living for a time with dementia. Died at the age of. According to CBS News.
He also hosted an enduring radio-news segment, “The Osgood File”, between 1971 and 2017. The audio vignettes were heard four times each weekday morning on various stations across America, and Osgood would sometimes analyze a news event, and, at other moments, provide rhyming commentary on the latest headlines. He would sometimes bid farewell to listeners by saying: “I’ll see you on the radio.”
“Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs,” Osgood was known for saying. “There is nothing that cannot be improved by making it smaller and better.”
He spent 45 years at CBS News before retiring in 2016. During his tenure, “Sunday Morning” reached its highest ratings level in three decades, and earned a Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Morning Program on three separate occasions.
“To say there is no one like Charles Osgood is an understatement,” longtime “Sunday Morning” executive producer Rand Morrison said in comments to CBS News. “He embodied the heart and soul of ‘Sunday Morning’.” His signature bow tie, his poetry…just his presence was special to audiences and those of us who worked with him.
Charles Osgood Wood III was born on January 8, 1933 in New York City. ) He was raised in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, and spent his early years taking piano lessons, delivering newspapers, and listening to the radio. When he attended Fordham University in the 1950s, he spent hours at the campus radio station, WFUV, where he became the lead announcer and launched his own program featuring his talk and piano stylings. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1954. achieved.
Osgood got his start as a classical music DJ at WGMS in Washington, D.C. He soon decided to join the U.S. Army to take up the position of band announcer. He would collaborate for years with composer and band arranger John Cacavas. The duo wrote the lyrics for the Top 40 hit “Gallant Men” in December 1966.
Osgood left the Army in 1958 and returned to WGMS before being hired as general manager to help start the nation’s first pay cable channel, WHCT, in Hartford, CT. The venture did not perform well and in 1963 Osgood took an on-air position at ABC Radio in New York. He spent four years as a general assignment reporter, and contributed to “Flare Report”, where he began composing rhymes and reading them on the air.
In 1967 Osgood became an anchor-reporter for WCBS NewsRadio 88 in New York, where he anchored the first morning drive shift when the station became an all-news outlet. He eventually landed at CBS News, where he launched the “Osgood File” for radio.
During her time at CBS News, Osgood interviewed people such as Keith Haring, Julia Child, and others. Andrew Wyeth, Sting and Lewis Nevelson. But he also enjoyed many interesting activities outside the newsroom. He served as the narrator of “Horton Hears a Who”, the animated feature film adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s popular children’s book. He also wrote the books “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House” and “Osgood on Speaking: How to Think on Your Feet Without Falling on Your Face.”
Surviving are his wife of 50 years, the former Jean Crafton; five children (Kathleen Wood Griffis, Kenneth Winston Wood, Anne-E Wood, Emily J. Wood and Jamie Wood); a sister, Mary Ann; and a brother, Ken. His first marriage, to Theresa Audette, ended in divorce after 16 years.
“Watching him at work was a masterclass in communication. I’ll still think to myself, ‘How would Charlie have said this?’, trying to capture the elusive warmth and intelligence of his voice and delivery,” said Jane Pauley, who wrote “Sunday” after Osgood’s departure. Took over the reins of “Morning”. “I hope I keep trying.”
