Charles Osgood Dies: Longtime ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ And Radio Host Was 91

Charles Osgood, the longtime host of CBS Sunday Morning and the radio program The Osgood File, died today at his home in New Jersey, the network said. He was 91.

His family said that the cause of death was dementia, according to the network where he’d worked for 45 years.

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With a folksy demeanor, calming voice and wit, the bowtie-wearing Osgood anchored Sunday Morning from 1994-2016, succeeding its original host, Charles Kuralt. He won a Peabody Award and a pair of Daytime Emmys for the show in the mid-2010s and received the News & Documentary Emmys’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

“I cannot think of anything that gives me more pleasure than Sunday Morning,” he told an interviewer, “because, first of all, it feels great to be part of something that people love, and I know that they do.”

He retired in 2016 and handed the reins over the Jane Pauley, and the show, with its in-depth features and trumpet score, remains a top-rated fixture. Here is a Pauley-narrated video tribute from CBS Morning News:

Born on January 8, 1933 in the Bronx and raised in Baltimore, the Fordham University grad worked in radio as an announcer before enlisting in the military to an emcee for the U.S. Army Band in the 1950s. After his military stint, her returned to WGMS in Washington DC where he announced as Charles Wood. He would later become program director.

In the ’60s, he began going by Charles Osgood at ABC Radio Network because it already. had an announcer named Charles Woods. This is where he also became friends with Ted Koppel.

He joined CBS News in 1971 — first as a reporter, and then as an anchor of the CBS Sunday Night News from 1981 to 1987. He also co-anchored the weekday CBS Morning News and served as a frequent news reader on CBS This Morning from 1987-92.

He also occasionally anchored the CBS Afternoon News and CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. He used to sign off from TV with “see you on the radio” to promote his “The Osgood File” segments for CBS Radio. Those vignettes aired multiple times each weekday morning.

Osgood is survived by Jean, his wife of 50 years, and their five children and six grandchildren.

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