Remembering legendary CBS newscaster Charles Osgood

Tributes are pouring in for legendary CBS newsman Charles Osgood, who has died at age 91.

Osgood followed Charles Kuralt into the host chair at the CBS Sunday Morning show and made it his own. For 22 years, until he retired from the program in 2016, he got to say: “Good Morning! I’m Charles Osgood and this is CBS Sunday.”

But at heart, he was a radio guy. He got his start with CBS News Radio. He hosted his short reports called The Osgood Files for decades, including one about a Fender electric guitar made of cardboard.

Humorist and CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca knew Osgood well and says Osgood’s passing feels like the loss of a family member.

“Charlie would play the piano on the show, but also at holiday parties,” he says. “One of the reasons I loved him at the piano was when we would gather around — and he was our Pater Familias — he so delighted in the rest of us joining in singing, even if some of us might be prickly producers and ordinarily grumbling, but if he could get us to sing 'The 12 Days of Christmas.' That was pretty great.”

Rocca says Osgood set himself apart from his generation of news people.

“I think of someone electrifying but hard-charging like Mike Wallace. Charlie was so different. And — I didn't know this until sort of the end of his tenure — when he would speak to camera, he'd always imagined that he was speaking to his younger sister that he grew up with in Baltimore and telling her a story. He was never ‘announcer-y’.”

Speaking of Osgood’s authenticity, Rocca remarked that even the newscaster’s clothes and iconic bowties never felt like costumes. They were part of his real persona. Osgood also had a unique writing style, often using rhymes in his broadcast.

“He was very concise with words, economical, but always with those grace notes,” says Rocca.

Osgood delivered a poem on the meaning of life in 2014.

“There was something about him that made you want to stand up straighter,” Rocca says. “Not because he was a disciplinarian, but because he was so proper, and he was such a gentleman.”

CBS donated the bowtie Osgood wore on his final edition of "CBS Sunday Morning" to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, five children and six grandchildren.

Adeline Sire produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Chris Bentley. Sire also adapted it for the web.