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As I reported last week, the Anti-Defamation League and its chief, Jonathan Greenblatt, complained to McMahon that Dokoupil, who is Jewish, was merely doing his job and being held to an absurd double standard.
The flacks at Skydance declined to comment because they don’t officially own the network just yet (CBS press officials didn’t return emails for comment), butnone of this is going unnoticed at Skydance as they see the value of the investment diminished by the woke mind virus. and the controversy it unleashed that keeps the whole mess in the news, and not in a good way.
Also chiming in is CBS nominal owner Shari Redstone, daughter of the late media mogul Sumner Redstone and architect of the media conglomerate. Shari said McMahon & Co. “made a mistake here” in their critique of Dokoupil.
Then Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks added more heat when he defended the network brass in a memo that appears to be written by some leftist in his DEI department.
The good news is the Ellisons and their partners at RedBird Capital, an investment firm that specializes in media, are saidto be united that the CBS woke show must end, I am told by people who know their thinking.
They’re aware of another looming controversy that threatens their investment: whether the esteemed CBS “60 Minutes” newsmagazine favorably edited its interview with Kamala Harris.
Yes, the woke suits at CBS are playing with fire — and their jobs — for a lot of reasons, including simple math.
I’ve read the Paramount balance sheet, and it doesn’t break out how much the news division earns (or loses) on its own.
The division is an expensive one. It costs money to run a big news operation. Woke programming costs even more in an era of cord-cutting.
As I point out in my new book, “Go Woke Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America,” businesses that continue to go there are increasingly crushed by consumers.
That’s why my Wall Street sources whoknow Ellison and RedBird say the news division could be sold at some point.
They’re more concerned with monetizing the sports programminglike CBS’s decidedly less political football coverage.
In the interim, though, David Ellison and pops Larry want CBS News to go back to its roots, people close to them tell me.
They don’t believe there’s a market for woke programminggiven the crowded marketplace occupied by the likes of MSNBC. “If CBS is going to survive, it’s got to get back to down-the-middle programming,” said one person with knowledge of Skydance’s thinking.
And, they tell me, if that takes blowing up the place, so be it.
https://nypost.com/2024/10/12/business/the-joke-is-on-woke-cbs-news-execs-as-new-execs-considering-blowing-the-place-up/