Paramount Already ‘Informally’ Considering Scaling Back Bari Weiss’ Role At CBS

from the dysfunction-junction dept

When right wing billionaire Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby kid David) hired trolling blogger Bari Weiss to run CBS News, Weiss arrived with the promise of “balanced, fact-based news,” “independent, principled journalism,” and a unique “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” that would completely modernize the network and reach the “everyday Americans” she claimed were being “ignored by mainstream media.”

In reality, she was hired by the billionaire to take what she did at her weird little troll blog (troll people for clicks, coddle the extraction class, punch left) and weave it into CBS News in a way that would get ratings and go viral on social media. She wasn’t hired to do journalism, she was hired to do attention-grabbing class and race agitprop.

The problem (for Weiss) is her role in that regard has been an abject failure, resulting in all sorts of internal chaos and the lowest ratings in a quarter century. She’s clumsily tried to censor stories critical of Trump, set up softball interviews for Benjamin Netanyahu, fired a bunch of people she worried were too “woke,” shuttered CBS radio (with a disregard for archives), and has caused generalized mayhem and a mass staff exodus, all while sporting a security detail costing the company $10,000 to $15,000 per day.

So, unsurprisingly, leaks are starting to emerge that Paramount is getting tired of the failures, and is starting to have “informal” conversations about scaling back Weiss’ role at CBS (and any planned oversight she might have if the Ellisons can pull off their acquisition of Warner Brothers and CNN). From the paywalled Puck report and this non-paywalled alternative:

“Bari would likely cede day-to-day control over Evening News, CBS Mornings, and 60 Minutes to this more experienced, as-yet-unnamed executive, shifting her focus to the news division’s digital growth while maintaining broad editorial influence across all the company’s platforms.”

Weiss, who was a trolling New York Times opinion columnist before she was the trolling editor in chief at Free Press, had no meaningful journalism or major news org management experience. That’s shown up repeatedly at CBS with all sorts of gaffes, like last-second impromptu edits made to the nightly newscast teleprompter in a way that easily confused her chosen nightly news host Tony Dokoupil. Or in the way Dokoupil couldn’t get the basic paperwork to properly cover the president’s trip to China.

All of these things would be fine if Weiss was getting ad attention and making money, but she isn’t. In part because she seems to have no understanding of modern media, and no idea of how to convert her weird troll blog aesthetic to a massive TV news organization. Despite all of her promises of media revolution, Weiss effectively has the brain of a 90-year old conservative man.

So it seems unlikely that Weiss will have much success managing CBS’ “digital growth” either. Ultimately that means the Ellisons will, after they’ve had enough time to try and justify the $150 million they paid for Bari’s troll blog, find someone worse who can try to get the network the attention it craves. Weiss, as is the case with all brunchlords, will somehow find a way to fail upward. It’s physics.

The problem for everyone involved is that the Paramount and Warner Brothers mergers have saddled the new giant company with an ocean of debt. Debt that historically only gets paid off one way: by hiking prices, firing workers, and cutting corners in a way that degrades product quality. That’s rocky terrain for a broadcast TV network already struggling with dying broadcast viewership and sagging relevance.

Good night and good luck.

Filed Under: agitprop, bari weiss, brunchlords, cbs news, journalism, larry ellison, media

Companies: cbs, paramount