CBS News is retiring Walter Cronkite’s voice, nearly six months after the esteemed anchorman died. Beginning Monday, the actor Morgan Freeman will read the introduction to the “CBS Evening News.”

Listen to the audio of Mr. Freeman’s introduction here.

When Mr. Cronkite died in July, CBS said it would retire his voice-over, but then changed its mind for the time being.

“We knew that, at some point, it would be time to transition,” Rick Kaplan, the executive producer of the “CBS Evening News,” said Monday. “The time was right.”

Mr. Kaplan said that Mr. Freeman recorded the new introduction on New Year’s Day.

“All three network broadcasts now have celebrities as their announcers,” TVNewser notes. “Michael Douglas began announcing ‘NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams’ on Dec. 17, 2007. And Mike Rowe, best known for hosting Discovery’s ‘Dirty Jobs’ debuted as the voice of ABC ‘World News with Diane Sawyer’ last month.”