The joke is on woke CBS News execs as new execs considering ‘blowing the place up’
CBS News — the once-prestigious “Tiffany Network” built by giants like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — is the latest media institution to succumb to the bizarre spectacle of full-on wokeness.
That was proven by a leaked tape of CBS’s fake-news execs idiotically rebuking an actual journalist doing his job.
“CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil got into trouble because he pressed the author of a one-sided, anti-Israel polemic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, about his warped, historically inaccurate views on the Middle East conflict.
It’s another example of how challenging someone like Coates — who is questioning Israel’s right to defend itself even on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre — is verboten in modern journalism these days.
What is less public is how all this weirdness is impacting CBS’s future as an ongoing business, and most important, its pending sale to Skydance, an independent studio run by movie producer David Ellison of “Top Gun: Maverick” fame.
David’s dad, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, provides much of the money behind the deal, and from what I gather, he’s not too happy about his latest acquisition.
If you don’t know Larry, here’s a primer: He’s one of the world’s richest men, and one of the most pro-Israel executives in corporate America — he’s buds with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
Let’s just say the people at Skydance and the Ellisons read the newspapers (particularly The Post, which I know for a fact).
They are powerless to do anything about what’s happening at CBS for now; the $28 billion deal to buy the network’s parent, Paramount, from the controlling Redstone family doesn’t close until sometime in the spring.
But they won’t be powerless for much longer. As one person who knows all the players at CBS’s new owners told me: “They’re thinking about blowing the place up.”
What exactly “blowing the place up” means, no one knows for sure. Will it result in the defenestration of CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and news-gathering chief Adrienne Roark, both of whom presided over the in-house thrashing of Dokoupil?
Above reproach?
Could it be the creation of a new ethics department — one devoid of DEI lunacy? One reason they chose to throw one of their own under the bus, many people believe, is because Coates is black, which in the world of DEI means he’s above reproach.
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), but none 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 said to 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 who know Ellison and RedBird say the news division could be sold at some point.
They’re more concerned with monetizing the sports programming like 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 programming given 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.