mojo55 wrote:

In years past, the four major U.S. radio networks CBS, NBC, ABC and Mutual used to provide wall to wall continuous coverage of presidential elections. As years have passed, these radio nets have by and large departed the media
landscape. However I was curious to know if there was any national U.S. over the air continuous coverage  at all of this election. Of course the all news stations such as WCBS and WBBM are providing coverage but only with bulletins
from CBS ....no continuous coverage. In fact, CBS radio news on the hour on WCBS was only 3 minutes long. The
continuous CBS radio stream is only available on their radio.net website. Not much use if you are in your car or away
from wifi.  I did find that WBEN radio was carrying ABC News Radio’s continuous coverage and upon checking
National Public Radio’s website I found that their stations were providing continuous coverage. NPR did state that
they were relying totally on AP to provide results and they would not monitor any other sources so their listeners would
have been at a disadvantage.
 

CBS and ABC had continuous coverage on radio.  NBC Radio which exists in name only and is run by an IHeart subsidiary called Total Traffic and Weather ran a white label Election Night show that could have been used by any IHeart station.
To your point about NPR using only AP, the Associated Press has the most extensive access to polling locations in the US.  AP has 4000 staff that has been on a first name basis with clerks in virtually every county in the United States for decades.  So by using the Associated Press, Google, NPR, Fox News, and the CBC were using the best possible source for election night numbers.  Fox does use its own decision desk and the CBC just makes a call when a majority of the other networks have made the same call.