THE LATE, GREAT SCOTT

Four down, three to go.

 Well, that was fast.

It could very well be that Scott Pelley wanted no part of the new regime at CBS News, and was aware his colleagues at 60 Minutes were afraid of the new direction (downhill) it was being taken.

Therefore, he decided to take one for the team, knowing it would likely cost him his job, while hoping to draw further attention to destruction of the legendary news franchise. 

There was a little meeting following the now-legendary throwdown between new 60 Minutes producer Nick "Slender Qualifications" Bilton and Pelley at the staff meeting. In addition to the two men, Bari Weiss and CBS president Tom Cirbrowski were on hand to iron things out. 

Pelley, for his part, asked Weiss why former executive producer Tanya Simon and on-air correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecelia Vega had gotten the sack. As Pelley described it later, she refused to answer; her manner “was cold and callous and beneath the dignity of CBS News.” Not when CBS is run by a father and son tag team doing business with Donald Trump, it isn't! 

"You can fit all of my network news experience
in my hands!"

Details were provided to the New York Times by "three people with knowledge" of the meeting. My money says their names are Pelley, Weiss, and Bilton. I can picture Weiss putting the call on speakerphone, allowing her to flap her hands around as she seems to do in every photo of her in conversation. 

Scott Pelley, like his former network colleague Stephen Colbert, will probably have a better gig lined up elsewhere. Somewhere management won't force him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” as he claims the current crew running 60 Minutes tried to do. 

Some cable or streaming platform could create a series -- let's call it Seven Days with Scott Pelley. He would be surrounded by hungry young reporters creating hard-hitting stories every week with no interference from management, while Pelley himself remains at the anchor desk for serious, one-on-one interviews with important newsmakers. The guy's pushing 70, y'know? Let others do the travelling while he stays in New York.

Or... forget cable! Just do the interviews on a weekly podcast, available on your laptop, smartphone, smart speaker, whatever you've got that's smart. Bari Weiss is always yakking about how networks are losing eyeballs to new media. Here's a chance to prove her right and cost her the job she was never qualified for!

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GREAT SCOTT!

 

Having signed an NDA, I'm skittish about naming
the employer, so here's a 1938 photo of the
block where I worked. Good luck figuring it out.

My previous, long-time employer had the occasional staff meeting, which consisted of one of the execs telling us what the company expected from us. Following her gentle harangues, she would ask if there were any comments. There rarely if ever were.

Over time, I decided to take her up on her offer, which shocked her for two reasons: 1) I tended to keep my yap shut, and 2) I told her that management had no idea what our jobs entailed and that the allegedly jimdandy software they forced on us was always crashing, wiping out weeks of work, and, in general, making our lives miserable. 

And because nothing ever changed, it was my same comment every time. After each meeting, co-workers -- many of whom I had never talked to before -- quietly thanked me for speaking up on their behalf. And many repeated their thanks on the day I was shown the door. 

The real-life Superman.

I was reminded of my one-man rebellion when Scott Pelley tore into his new boss Nick Bilton at a staff meeting like a starving man at a Thanksgiving meal. 

Without couching any of his remarks behind gentle "concerns", Pelley questioned the qualifications of the new guard at CBS News. He added that Bilton's boss, Bari Weiss, was out to "murder" 60 Minutes.

What could Bilton say in response to Pelley -- winner of 48 Emmys and three Peabody Awards for news reporting -- other than "I’m very excited to meet with everyone, yourself included” and "Enjoy the bagels". Oh, and "The show is going to stay exactly as it is FOR NOW" (emphasis added to drive it home). 

Three down, four to go.

You'd think television's #1 rated news program (averaging 9.1 million viewers, peaking at 14 million last November) which has seen a 5% increase in viewers 25-54 would stay exactly as it is forever. But not when Bari Weiss (under the guidance of Davd Ellison and Donald Trump) is calling the shots.

Last week, Weiss lived up to the cliche that women hate female competition in the workplace by firing three of them last week: executive producer Tanya Simon and correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. They join Anderson Cooper, who left on his volition after seeing the Trump handwriting on the wall. Little wonder the higher-ups at CBS kept her away from the meeting "citing the staff’s ill feelings surrounding the firings". Yeah, that's the kind of person you want running the news division!

David Ellison and Bari Weiss: the news
equivalent of the pimp and his wifey.

Scott Pelley is in the enviable position of having his boss over a barrel. If he's fired, the 60 Minutes viewers will leave in droves. Which is perhaps the idea, especially if rumors concerning the hiring of professional meathead Joe Rogan are true. 

If Weiss grits her teeth and keeps Pelley onboard, his presence will be a constant reminder that not only does he loathe her, she'll know, deep down in her icy heart, he is correct that she has "no qualifications" for her job. Outside of being really good at selling herself to the highest bidder, I mean. 

For all of Weiss' alleged intellect, she's just another moron who, like other Trump minions, believes that she's the genius who's cracked the code on how to keep her job. Just wait 'til she realizes that she was really was hired to whack 60 Minutes. 

The clock is ticking on Bari Weiss'
career at CBS.

As the ratings drop, "CBS insiders" will tell friendly reporters at the New York Times that Weiss's job is on "shaky ground", while those same backstabbers will claim to the Wall Street Journal, "Nothing could be further than the truth. We believe Bari is doing a wonderful job and stand by her."  Meaning, We give her three weeks, tops. 

In the end, Bari's golden parachute will soften the fall, even as she becomes toxic to any journalistic enterprise outside of Newsmax. That would make a heck of a story for Scott Pelley to cover.

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A MEDIOCRE BARI-TONE

And like CBS News, it used to be majestic.

 By now, the reputation of CBS News under the Ellison/Weiss regime can no longer be
compared to the Titanic. A better maritime choice would be the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, the German ship sunk by a Soviet U-boat in 1945. Of the 9,000-plus victims, most were innocent refugees who had done nothing to deserve their fate. 

Is it tasteless to compare the deaths of refugees to the firing of network employees? Aw hell, you don't know tasteless if you haven't been keeping up with the news CBS doesn't cover. The New York Times headline on the left says it all. 

If they were really interested in their much-vaunted "fairness", the new guard at CBS would have a party for AOC or Bernie Sanders. When even a half-wit pinhead jackass dumbbell like Ted Cruz says the FCC should keep out of the latest Jimmy Kimmel "controversy", you know the current administration is treating the Constitution as a doormat for its feces-stained shoes. (Too bad Ted doesn't include his and the GOP's responsibility in bringing us to where we are today.)

It became clear just how deep in the hole Weiss is for Trump during the
episode of 60 Minutes the day after the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents Suck-Up Fest. 

You couldn't pay me to get even that close to
Trump.

The narcissist-in-chief replied to Norah O'Donnell's perfectly legitimate questions with personal insults, the kind one might expect from an ill-behaved teenager rather than the alleged leader of the free world (although today that honor belongs to the president of Ukraine). 

I understand why a pro like O'Donnell didn't call him out -- if asked, she'd have said she was "showing respect for the office", as if Trump were literally one of his buildings. But a good boss, especially one running a network's news division, might put out a press release. Something along the lines of, "Despite facing personal attacks, hostile responses, and a litany of obfuscation from the president, Norah O'Donnell pressed on, showing the kind of professionalism that has made CBS News a legend for almost a century." 

Instead... nothing. Weiss made time to "clap back" at George Clooney for a remark made about her ties to Trump. But anything about the verbal abuse hurled at one of the network's top reporters? Can't call out the guy who's really responsible for her new job! 

The staff must have missed the other part
of Trump's anatomy she kissed.

Every month since Weiss' hiring, the headline "CBS News Ratings Hit Historic Lows" has been seen as often as, well, "Trump's Polling Numbers Hit Historic Lows". How is it that the chairman of the FCC claims to be going after ABC for DEI hiring when Weiss is the most unqualified person in network television today?

Bari Weiss isn't the first person to sell-out for a cool job and jumbo salary, and she won't be the last. It's just funny that a smarty-pants graduate from Columbia University thinks that things would turn out differently for her. 

And after getting the heave-ho from Larry Ellison when she's no longer useful, maybe Weiss will recall a more important lesson that too few people have learned: Everything that Trump touches dies. All aboard the good ship Wilhelm Gustloff!

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IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL IT ISN'T

The joke's on us.

After announcing the soon-to-be-cancellation of Late Night with Stephen Colbert, CBS promised it was shutting the door on late-night entertainment. 

But earlier this week, like a landlord secretly holding out for more money, they gave the housekey to a new tenant. CBS will be leasing the 11:35p.m.- 1:05a.m. slot to producer Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask.

As with all of Allen's output, these shows are low-budget, low-concept rehashes of other people's ideas featuring second-tier talent. Comics Unleashed is a gussied-up version of the hoary Can You Top This?, while Funny You Should Ask is Hollywood Squares without the tic-tac-toe motif. 

A better title would be Comics Paid Scale to Fill
Byron Allen's Wallet.

Stuff like this has made Byron Allen a very wealthy man. If you haven't heard of him or the product he's been churning out, it's probably because his syndicated shows run in many markets at 2:00a.m. when stoners and

insomniacs make for an undemanding audience.

Allen hopes the ad revenue he earns will make up for the "tens of millions of dollars" he's forking over, which perhaps explains why his contract with CBS is for only one year. While he might be hedging his bets regarding the wisdom of spending that kind of dough, my theory is CBS will be paying close attention to the ratings. 

If it's a game show they want, CBS could make 
more money with You Bet Your Life reruns.

If the numbers for these cheaper-than-cheap shows come within spitting distance of the two Jimmys (Fallon and Kimmel), the network might want to produce their own low-rent rip-offs of Allen's low-rent rip-offs, with titles like Comics Unhinged and What's So Funny? 

The ad revenue for that kind of programming will more than offset the production costs. And it'll let the network's PR department spin the situation with quotes like "CBS is back with late-night laughs!" Can you top this? Original ideas not required.

Colbert gets the last laugh on
the boss.

Interestingly, Colbert's next move has nothing to do with moving to another network. Warner Bros. has signed him and his son to write the screenplay for Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past. That's a pretty good step up from interviewing actors plugging their new movies.

It's fun to picture Colbert winning the Academy Award for Best Screenplay and thanking Larry Ellison for making it all possible. Meanwhile back at CBS, Tony Dokoupil will make his debut as late-night game show host produced by "Network Executive in Charge of Mindless Entertainment" Bari Weiss. For those two, it would be more honest work than what they're doing now.

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WITH ALL THE FRILLS UPON IT

You can be sure that New York's new Archbishop
was delighted to have this crew on the stairs of
St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Another Easter come and gone! As usual, here in New York, folks celebrated the
resurrection of the Lord and Saviour by parading down Fifth Avenue while looking like escapees from a lunatic asylum. Atheists might find such a thing appropriate.

What do you suppose the GOP reaction would
have been to Barack Obama saying "Praise be
to Allah" on Easter?

Speaking of lunatics, our president made sure to mark the holiest of days with one of his usual thoughtful remarks. Does anyone know if the morning crew on Fox News quoted Trump word for word?

Ooh, he's so tough!

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Schumer offered one of his rip-snorting, fist-pounding responses to Trump we've come to expect. Way to tell him off, Chucko! And for God's sakes, be sure not to demand a response from your GOP colleagues. That would demand a spine.

"Once we take over, Bari will be the first to go."

To round out the day, Franklin Graham, was asked to give a homily at the end of 60 Minutes. Because who else is better to speak the word of the Lord than a right-wing racist, homophobic, anti-Muslim Evangelist who supports the insane, sexual harassing pedophile-in-chief currently occupying the White House?

By the way, the appearance by Graham -- who compares homosexuality to murder -- should be a sign that Bari Weiss will do everything she can to promote right-wing Christianity in order to make her target audience forget she's a Jewish lesbian -- who dated leftwing SNL lesbian Kate McKinnon!  Clever girl, our Bari! 

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SIXTY MINUTES, ZERO CREDIBILITY

The Weiss way of fixing 60 Minutes.

Bari Weiss can't help looking like a neutron bomb in her quest to reshape CBS News into something nobody except Larry Ellison asked for. After getting rid of the network's radio division, Weiss is taking her ax to its crown jewel, 60 Minutes. Her motto seems to be "It became necessary to destroy CBS News in order to save it." Because a similar move worked so well in Vietnam.

Depending on who's tipping off the press, what Weiss is planning has been described as a "change in tone", "shake-up", or "bloodbath".  Oddly, one of her complaints is the number of "soft" pieces 60 Minutes has run lately -- like, since she became the news division's editor-in-chief. In fact, Weiss' most famous move so far was spiking a hard-hitting story about abuses at an ICE detention center in Venezuela, so I don't understand what her gripe is.

Kate McKinnon (middle) likely prefers
memories of hanging with Greta Gerwig
(left) in theater class.

(What would make a great story is how Weiss dated former Saturday Night Live cast member Kate McKinnon during their days at Columbia University. Don't worry, Kate, everyone has that How did I sleep with that person? stage in their life.)

According to a "source familiar with the situation" -- there are a lot of those people around in every profession, aren't there? -- Weiss is ready to "blow it up as soon as the season is over." This evokes an image of her placing an Acme Portable Explosion Device at CBS headquarters. And, to paraphrase a previous wisecrack, we know how well that worked for the Coyote.

Bari Wess was minus-16 when 60 Minutes debuted.

Weiss wants to clean house both behind and in front of the camera, hoping to

bring in younger correspondents. Now, I understand her desire for new blood. There are, I'm sure, plenty of youngbloods who are champing at the bit (or the CBS eye) to prove their mettle. 

The big problem, as I've pointed out more than once, is that the "younger audience" so desired by networks doesn't watch "legacy" media. And the folks who tune into 60 Minutes do so in part because their current correspondents, whose combined ages is Old As The Hills, are perceived as wise, trustworthy, and unafraid to confront the powers-that-be.

One old-timer will still host the show.

Weiss' desire, on the other hand, is to hire whippersnappers whose points of views align with hers. Meaning something like Russia's TASS news agency. Which forces me to repeat, yet again, that audience already has Fox News.

To sum up: Bari Weiss will "improve" 60 Minutes by losing their current viewers while not gaining any new ones. To paraphrase a previous wisecrack once more, Tony Dokoupil can fill you in on how that's going for CBS Evening News. 

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THE ZIRCONIUM NETWORK

 

Oh yeah, that's a winning team right there.

When last we saw Bari Weiss, the blogger-turned-network titan had been charged by 
her masters Larry and David Ellison to salvage what was left of the reputation of CBS News. 

In the intervening months, Weiss has worked her magic by hiring the weepy Tony Dokoupil to commandeer CBS Evening News, postponing an anti-ICE piece on 60 Minutes until an evening that a major football game on another network would distract viewers, firing over 6% of its workforce, seeing a producer quit in angry frustration, watched the staff of CBS streaming News walk off the job for 24 hours, and sending the ratings (and possibly her job) into a death spiral worthy of Karl Wallenda. 

Tony Dokupil prepares for his new job as a used
car salesman.

None of that was enough to complete her job, so she announced the shuttering of CBS Radio News a year short of its 100th birthday. 

Before going further, let me ask: does referring to Bari Weiss as a useful idiot for the Trump toe-sucking Ellisons sound homophobic? Or misogynistic? Or true? Leave comments below, subscribe, like, give a thumbs up, ring the bell, and whatever else is considered proof of news viewership.

They've gone from "Good night and
good luck" to "So long, suckers!"

Because that's where CBS News is headed. As reported late last year, Weiss told staffers they will need to lean more into podcasting. “I’m here to tell you that if we stick to that [focusing on broadcast] strategy, we’re toast,” Weiss said. But what Weiss has accomplished since then is burnt toast and a rotten egg.

I'm not convinced that Weiss decided to shut down CBS Radio News on her own. Surely the Ellisons whispered the idea in her ear. Say, Bari, who listens to radio news anyway, except people in their cars who don't have Sirus/XM? 

And they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. Anyone following radio news at home is tuned to either Fox Radio or NPR. The former are counting their containers of survivalists' canned meat while they listen, while the latter knit FUCK TRUMP doilies. Everyone else is either at work, looking for work, or waiting for mainstream news to admit World War III is in progress.

Sharp enough to know the
news division is doomed.

What we're witnessing isn't the end of CBS News per se. It's the beginning of the end of network news as we've known it. Those eight million viewers watching David Muir on ABC are baby boomers and Gen Xers from the P.C. (pre-cable) years, and neither are going to live forever.

Younger people get their news from other sources and can't afford cable anyway. No way they're suddenly going to put everything on hold at dinner time to watch 18 minutes of news and 12 minutes of commercials for pharmaceuticals and LiMu Emu. 

The Ellisons, like oligarchs before them, are taking advantage of a changing landscape, reshaping it to their liking. Meanwhile, Bari Weiss genuinely believes she's doing good, rather than realizing she's just a vessel for her masters' evil ways and will get thrown overboard when the job is complete. That's the way it is, whether you like it or not.

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WORD FROM THE WEISS

Bari Weiss and the guy who competes with his
son as to who can masturbate the least.

 I have no dog in the fight between Bari Weiss and the rest of the journalism
world. Her recent promotion to editor-in-chief of CBS News is admittedly quite the jump for a former New York Times columnist-turned-online news editor. Impressive stuff for a 41 year-old woman in a world of grey-haired men. 

And it isn't her age or gender causing controversy. Weiss is considered by many to be right-wing. My only exposure to her has been on Real Time with Bill Maher, where she seemed to be a centrist whose views didn't necessarily bend leftward -- certainly nothing like the reactionary harridan she was often made out to be. 

Don't forget people who iron, too.

The main gripe against Weiss is that she's had it with "legacy media", i.e. the old-school news outlets who, let's face it, are no longer groundbreaking, unless that ground is their graves. As NPR reports, "Weiss paints a picture of two increasingly powerful extremes — 'an America-loathing far left' and a 'history-erasing far right' — and says the majority of 'smart, politically mixed, pragmatic Americans' who fall somewhere in between are not being well served." 

The most trusted pipe in America.

This is not too far off the mark, but the far right hates America in its own ways, too. And I would add that the overall ratings drop for the 6:30 network news isn't just due to audience distrust. Who needs to wait until the early evening to watch four-minute recaps of perhaps a half-dozen big stories of the day when you've got several cable news networks going further in depth all day? it doesn't matter who's running the show; the days of CBS Evening News getting 53-million viewers are deader than the White House east wing, so good luck with any shake-up turning things around.

CBS News employees line up for the mandatory
Bari Weiss hug.

But what really irritates the hell out of me is Bari Weiss's offer to act as a shoulder to cry on:

“This is just such an enormously difficult day for so many people who have given years of their lives to this company,” she said during the morning editorial call, according to audio reviewed by The Independent. “And I’m sorry, and I want to support everyone in whatever way I can,” she added. “My door is open, whether I’m sitting up here or downstairs.”

Hey thanks, Bari! Does that "support" include paying their bills until they can land a new job in an industry focused more on laying off workers than actually reporting the news? 

The more you look at Ellison's face, the more you
want to punch it. Hard.

If you're wondering how Weiss started calling the shots, she was hired by David Ellison, the plutocrat running something called Paramount Skydance which also falls under the CBS New umbrella (or vice-versa; I've never understood big business). Ellison sent out an email to his 1000 underlings (100 of which worked for the news division) who are now out of a job: 

Yippee! I'm so good I'm
getting fired!

In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization. In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth. Ultimately, these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success. 

We are deeply grateful for your hard work, professionalism, and resilience during this period of transition. We remain confident that Paramount’s best days are ahead, and we’re committed to building a strong foundation for the future.

Goddamnmightydamn, how I hate hate HATE business mumbo jumbo doubletalk that attempts to make the now-unemployed folks understand that this was necessary -- not for them, mind you, but the ORGANIZATION. 

The capper, of course, is how grateful he is for their hard work, professionalism and resilience. So grateful that he's letting them go. I would have far more respect for Ellison had he said, We want to save money. You're in the way. To quote CBS News legend Edward R. Murrow, good night and good luck. 

On second thought, maybe it's better I don't respect him at all.

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