CBS Sunday Morning’s ‘In Memoriam’: How Television’s Most Thoughtful Tribute Honors the Icons We Lost in 2025
Theres a moment in every CBS Sunday Morning broadcast where the show shifts from journalism to something closer to ritual. The music changes. The pace slows. And for a few minutes, we collectively remember the people we lost.
The January 4th broadcast includes the annual “In Memoriam” segment – CBS Sunday Morning’s tribute to notable figures who died in 2025. And while every news outlet does some version of year-end remembrances, nobody does it quite like this show.
What Makes This Different
Most obituary roundups are lists. Names, dates, maybe a famous photo or two. CBS Sunday Morning does something else entirely – they pull from decades of their own interview archives to let the departed speak for themselves.
Thats the magic of it, really. Youre not just seeing a photo of someone who died. Youre hearing their voice, in conversation with a CBS correspondent, reflecting on their life and work. Sometimes its from an interview decades old. Sometimes its recent. But its always them.
The show has been doing this since the Charles Kuralt era, and executive producer Rand Morrison has maintained that contemplative approach. In a media landscape dominated by quick cuts and hot takes, this segment insists on slowness, on reflection, on actually sitting with loss.
The Categories
The tribute typically covers several categories of notable deaths:
Celebrated celebrities – the names everyone recognizes, the faces from movies and television and music that shaped popular culture.
Newsmakers and public figures – politicians, activists, people who changed policy or public discourse.
Creative figures – the artists, writers, musicians who might not have been household names but whose work touched millions.
The segments vary in length depending on the year. 2025 saw its share of significant losses across all these categories, and Sunday’s broadcast will touch on many of them.
Why It Matters
Theres something almost countercultural about the “In Memoriam” segment in 2026. Our media ecosystem encourages forgetting – the news cycle moves so fast that someone can die, trend for a day, and be algorithmically buried by the next crisis.
CBS Sunday Morning refuses to participate in that erasure. The segment says: these people mattered. Their lives had meaning. We should take a moment to remember.
Its especially powerful for the lesser-known creative figures. A novelist who shaped a generation of writers. A jazz musician whose work influenced everyone who came after. A playwright whose words are still being performed. These arent always the splashy celebrity deaths, but theyre presented with the same reverence.
The Technical Craft
From a media analysis perspective, the segment is masterfully produced. The music choices set an appropriately contemplative mood without being maudlin. The editing pace allows each person’s words to breathe. The archival footage is pristine – CBS has been doing Sunday Morning since 1979, so they have a deep library to draw from.
The voiceover narration is spare, almost minimal. The philosophy seems to be: let the subjects speak for themselves as much as possible. Commentary comes in to provide context, but the emotional core is always the person being remembered.
The Sunday Ritual
For millions of Americans, CBS Sunday Morning is a weekly ritual. Coffee, maybe some breakfast, the newspaper (physical or digital), and this show playing in the background. Its designed for that – the pacing assumes youre multitasking, that you might look up when something catches your ear.
The “In Memoriam” segment is different. People stop. They watch. They listen.
I know families where the annual tribute segment has become its own tradition – a moment to acknowledge the year’s losses together, to talk about who they remember and why.
Where to Watch
The January 4th broadcast airs at 9:00 AM ET on CBS. Also available on demand at CBSNews.com, CBS.com, and Paramount+. Streaming on Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, and Chromecast.
If you miss it live, the “In Memoriam” segment specifically will almost certainly be shared on CBS News’ website and social channels. Also available on Paramount+ for streaming. But theres something about watching it in context – as part of the full broadcast, with all its other features and stories – that makes the tribute land differently.
A Final Thought
We dont do death well in American culture. We rush past it. We compartmentalize it. We change the subject.
CBS Sunday Morning’s “In Memoriam” segment is a small act of resistance against that tendency. Once a year, on the first broadcast of January, the show asks us to slow down and remember. Not just the famous names, but the creative souls and newsmakers who shaped our world in ways big and small. We covered Brigitte Bardot’s passing when it happened – tonight she’ll be remembered alongside so many others.
Thats valuable. Maybe more valuable now than ever.
