CBS News is in a downward spiral
Bari Weiss has been leading CBS News for a year, and it's not going well.
CBS News isn't doing so well these days. Bari Weiss, one of the most obnoxious figures in the media, took over the network about a year ago. At the time, she famously said, "Let's do the fucking news." She's been pushing CBS in the opposite direction ever since.
According to the latest reporting, CBS' 60 Minutes, Evening News and Mornings programs are all facing abysmal ratings. The recent season premiere of 60 Minutes drew 7.9 million viewers, which is the smallest audience it's had in decades.
The network started to move to the right politically when Trump ally David Ellison purchased Paramount, CBS' parent company, and installed Weiss as the head of CBS News. They seemed to believe they could capture a conservative audience that had never had much interest in CBS, and it looks like they were wrong. This isn't the first time we've witnessed that kind of miscalculation. We've seen the same thing happen at the Washington Post.
"The people have spoken, and what they're saying is, 'We don't like what we're seeing,'" Justin Baragona, a media reporter at Zeteo, tells me. "Whatever her strategy was—appealing to this make-believe middle 70% of the population—they're not tuning in."
Baragona says that, according to his reporting, the 60 Minutes premiere was barely discussed during a morning meeting at the company. He said the low ratings were essentially ignored. Behind closed doors, though, he's sure it's a hot topic.
"What's happening behind the scenes is Bari's freaking out," Baragona says. "There doesn't seem to be any fix to what she's now done."
Meanwhile, Ellison is trying to get a merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. done, but he's facing more resistance than expected. It appears he thought his friendly relationship with the Trump administration would make it a done deal, but a lawsuit by a coalition of 12 state attorneys general—led by California AG Rob Bonta—has derailed his plans.
Thor Benson
"I think David Ellison was just like, 'Oh, yeah, we've already got [the Trump administration] on our side. Brendan Carr, the FCC chief, is on board. Trump's happy. It's just going to be smooth sailing,'" Baragona says. "They forgot about the AGs, specifically Rob Bonta, and next thing you know this thing is on hold. It could potentially just blow up altogether."
The longer this battle goes on, the more expensive it becomes for Paramount. Baragona says he thinks there will probably end up being a settlement if Ellison is going to get this deal through. Oracle, the company behind the Ellison family's wealth, is also losing money on its big AI bets. David Ellison's father, Larry Ellison, could be growing impatient.
“It could lead to them needing to sell assets, which could potentially mean having to sell CNN," Baragona says. CNN is owned by Warner Bros. and is part of the deal.
Everything that's happening here is part of a story about the Trump administration trying to bend the media to its will. The concern has been that we'd see something like what happened in Hungary under Viktor Orbán, where an authoritarian was able to get his allies to buy up all of the media companies and change their programming.
The Trump administration wants compliant media outlets that will push its propaganda, and Ellison has been part of that effort. Baragona says the administration has been successful in quite a few of its media intimidation efforts, but CBS and the related drama look like they could be a flop.
"All you're doing is just making your existing audience leave while not bringing in anyone new," Baragona says. "That's essentially the takeaway here.”
