Radio stations in Vermont have been scrambling to provide listeners with quality national and international news following the closure of CBS News Radio last week.

CBS News leaders cited “challenging economic realities” and changing listening habits for the decision to shut down the storied service after nearly 100 years on the air.

“I miss the quality of CBS News, and the replacement we’ve got pales in comparison,” said Aaron Gonthier, station manager at WCVR in Randolph.

Sugar River Media owns the country music station and five others in the Upper Valley. They all switched to USA Radio News for updates at the top and bottom of the hour. The content is provided to affiliate stations for free in exchange for airing ads sold by the network — similar to the deal provided by CBS.

The CBS News Radio service was “highly polished” and provided reliable, trustworthy news from around the globe, Gonthier said. But, he added, the replacement service just can’t match it.

“It’s like going from a Roll Royce to a Chevy. The Chevy is not bad, but it’s no Rolls,” he said.

WDEV in Waterbury faced a similarly difficult decision. Since its founding in 1931, the station had carried CBS and was very happy with the service, said Meyers Mermel, one of the current owners.

“It was a very professional, well-run organization that produced great news,” said Mermel, who has run for political office as a conservative Republican and who purchased the Radio Vermont Group in 2024.

The station learned in March that CBS Radio was shutting down the service. Mermel said he was not surprised by the move given the challenging economics of the industry.

“There is a reason they went out of business — it’s not sustainable. No other company can invest $15 million into a news operation that probably made about $3 million,” Mermel said.

Finding a replacement was difficult, he said. ABC News Radio was an option, but Mermel said the broadcaster demanded to include contract language about a penalty of up to $400,000 for breaking the pact.

They landed on a radio service provided by the Salem Media Group, a publicly traded company that bills itself as “America’s leading multimedia company specializing in Christian and conservative content.”

The Salem Radio Network is a full-service satellite radio network based in Dallas, Texas, that serves Christian-formatted and general market news/talk stations. Its hourly news broadcast service, Townhall/SRN News, describes itself as “family-focused straight down the middle news with no slant!”

Mermel stressed that his networks get its content from the Townhall/SRN News division of the media company, not the ones with overt biases.

However, the news stories airing on WDEV urge people to learn more by going to www.townhall.com. That site calls itself the “leading source for conservative news and political commentary and analysis.”

The ads that accompany the segment also direct people to businesses marketing themselves as Christian debt management, mortgage and health care services.

Mermel said he’s listened to the newscasts and found them to be unbiased. He is aware that the service has corporate connections to other media services with conservative and Christian slants, but said he did not detect that in what was actually being aired.

“The audio product to date has been straight down the middle and agnostic,” Mermel said.

Mermel said he’s only had feedback from two people since the switch on May 22.

“I’ve heard one gushing tribute and one lukewarm condemnation,” Mermel said.

The person who provided the criticism was unable to provide any proof of bias in the news reports, he said.

“We picked what we thought was the best provider for what our budget had,” Mermel said. “If people don’t like it, we can always change.”

He added, however, that there are few options, and it’s not even clear that services such as ABC will be providing news content long-term, he said.

Elsewhere in the Vermont radio industry, longtime radio host Kurt Wright returned to the airwaves this week as cohost of “The Morning Drive” on Burlington’s WVMT. The former Republican state representative and Burlington City Council member stepped aside last year. He told WCAX that the show, on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., would cover a mix of serious and light topics.

“We’ll try to do the show the right way and hopefully make people proud,” Wright told the station.