Original Coverage & Source Attribution: hunterharris.substack.com
On Tuesday, the deal between Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery closes, giving David Ellison control of two historic movie studios. The deal unites Paramount and Warner Bros., CBS and CNN, HBO Max and Paramount+.
“Cable television, one of the biggest cash cows in media, is still profitable but in terminal decline. Streaming still hasn’t replaced those profits. Trust in the news business is in the basement. And tech companies like Amazon and Apple are muscling in on movies, TV shows and sports rights, driving up content costs,” The New York Times summarized Tuesday. “Those challenges will pose a major test for Mr. Ellison, 43, who until last year had never run a public media company.” Ellison chose someone similarly inexperienced to run the “Tiffany network,” CBS News: the former Times opinion writer-turned-Free Press founder Bari Weiss.
Weiss, most famous for quitting the New York Times when her coworkers were mean to her on Slack and on Twitter, was named “editor in chief” of CBS last October. In the time since her arrival, Weiss has: installed Tony Dokoupil as the anchor of CBS Evening News, lost 60 Minutes correspondents Anderson Cooper and Sharyn Alfonsi, fired Scott Pelley, and hosted an “exclusive” town hall interview with Erika Kirke, a woman who would show up mic’d to the opening of an Amazon package. All this, mind you, as she installed an unimpressive tech columnist without significant broadcast experience as executive producer of 60 Minutes, which has maintained “numbers below last season’s average,” according to Variety.
“She doesn’t hear anybody. If you don’t agree with what she’s saying or doing, it doesn’t matter. She pretends to hear ideas, but she really doesn’t listen to anyone,” a source told Page Six.
Ellison gets the Succession comparisons as the Oracle fortune’s nepo son, but Weiss might have more in common with Succession’s would-be scion, Kendall Roy. Her sentences are clusters of clichés and hyperbole. The media’s purpose, it would seem, is to “disrupt” or “rebel,” usually in ways that parrot Weiss’s own beliefs or enhance her own personal brand. Have you ever read the Free Press? It’s the paper of record for people who want to complain about Democrats but find Fox News low-class and distasteful. It’s the outlet of choice for parents disappointed their child comes home on fall break with buzzwords like “cisgender.” You could even say its stories are “chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences,” as Weiss wrote in her Times resignation letter.
“What concerned me was that she had zero television experience and had never managed a large global operation like CBS News,” Pelley told The New York Times in what was effectively his 60 Minutes exit interview. Weiss asked the 60 staff why “the country thinks you’re biased.” “She didn’t offer any kind of a metric,” Pelley told the Times. “Do you have a poll? Is there market research? What are you talking about? We felt that she was making statements that she couldn’t back up and was coming into the news division with hardened preconceived notions that didn’t seem to be thought through.” With the Skydance merger officially closed, it remains to be seen what senior leadership role Weiss will have at yet another Ellison-owned major news organization. (Current CNN CEO Mark Thompson will stay on for the foreseeable future, joining Weiss on the Paramount-Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery CEO leadership team, per Adweek. Puck’s Dylan Byers has reported that “David intended to give Bari an influential editorial role at CNN, but that he would seek a more seasoned executive to help her manage the operations of the business.”)
So tonight a quiz! Who said that: Bari Weiss or Kendall Roy? Comment your answers — no cheating! — and I’ll post the answer key tomorrow afternoon.
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“Let’s do the fucking news!”
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“The goal for this road show is not to deliver the news so much as it is to *drive the news.* We need to *be the news* for these 10 days.”
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“The headline needs to be ‘fuck the weather, we’re changing the cultural climate.”
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“Start-ups aren’t for everyone. They’re places that move at rapid speed. They experiment. They try new things. They sometimes create noise and, yes, bad press. If that’s not your bag, that’s OK. It’s a free country and I completely respect if you decide this is just not the right place at the right time for you.”
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“What are words? Complicated airflow.”
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“Let’s make sure every single night has something with viral potential.”
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“I love to win.”
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“We go reverse Viking… We pillage their village.”
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“New money. You gotta hold those fresh bills to the light.”
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“I want to begin by thanking you all for attending my lecture on the antichrist.”
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“Can we make the protestors look more violent?”
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“When you say the thing that’s not, that’s a lie.”
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“Hello powerhouse friends.”
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“You couldn’t get a job at a burger joint, let alone a Fortune 500, without some nepotism.”
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“So, I just wanted to get the gang together early in my tenure to say, uh… YO”
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“All I know is I went to bed with this adorable opinion writer and woke up next to Les Moonves. I’m as shocked as you are.”
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“It’s Substack meets Masterclass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker.”
