Yes, I know Donald Trump went into a tizzy of a snit meltdown on Meet the Press yesterday.
That will need to be a topic for a different post.
Maybe later this morning?
Geez! This guy.....
Meanwhile, what's all the fuckery going on at CBS? C'mon, kids! Let's find out!
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Firing a top rated journalist for the network's #1 news magazine show seems a bit short sighted and self destructive.
Why it would be like firing the host of a #1 late night talk show.
But wait! CBS did that too.
It's been a couple of weeks since The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ended it's run. How's that worked out so far?
Well, the two Jimmies are doing OK.
Both Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon have both saw increases in their ratings. Meanwhile, the show CBS replaced Colbert with has lost approximately 70% of the audience Colbert had.
That replacement show is called Comics Unleashed, a half hour syndicated show hosted by billionaire media mogul Byron Allen. Allen is joined by 4 stand up comedians who sit around and run through their paces for 20 minutes.
A full 1/3 of the half hour run time goes to ads.
Allen delivers a new half hour for 11:35 PM followed by a rerun to fill out the hour. And since this show has been on for 20 years, Allen has a lot of reruns to choose from.
Episodes of Comics Unleashed are mostly interchangeable, fastidiously apolitical and avoiding anything that smacks of topicality or any potential offense.
There's nothing there to offend Donald Trump and his MAGA faithful.
Norm McDonald once said of Comics Unleashed "comics are most definitely leashed".
Does CBS stand for "Canned Bland Sludge"?
Is CBS concerned that it traded a ratings winner for an anemic platform of bland comedy? It seems no.
The deal is Byron Allen leases the time slot from CBS in exchange for keeping whatever ad revenue he can earn. CBS gets paid up front so it's pure profit for them.
And they don't have to deal with that pesk Stephen Colbert hurting the feelings of Paramount CEO David Ellison's best pal,Li'l Donnie Trump.
But we're not supposed to bring up stuff like that.
But Scott Pelley did and he got fired.
OK, some background.
When Ellison's Skydance bought out Paramount with the Trump administration's OK (especially after CBS announced it was cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), Ellison came gunning for CBS News. He hired Bari Weiss to head of the news department.
Who the fuck is Bari Weiss?
Weiss is a Trump supporting MAGA centric writer and pundit who founded The Free Press, a conservative media outlet with a pro-MAGA anti-woke agenda.
David Ellison bought The Free Press for $150 million and made Weiss editor in chief of CBS News. Weiss got this job with ZERO experience running a news organization.
Here's what Weiss has accomplished so far.
She ended the venerated CBS News Radio after nearly a centiury on the air. Look, I get that radio ain't what it used to be and there is a real possibility CBS News Radio had outlived it's usefulness. But my main point is Weiss' biggest accomplishment is to kill something. And perhaps she has other targets. Which brings us to....
As anchor of the CBS Evening News, Weiss installed Tony Dokoupil as anchor. Dokoupil is a vacuous empty headed card board cut out of a news anchor. He ends every broadcast with "that's another day in America" as if news isn't happening elsewhere in the world but hey, if makes the America First MAGA faithful happy, who cares?
There's apparently not enough of America First MAGA faithful who do actually care as CBS Evening News is plagued by declining ratings.
Now she has her eyes on 60 Minutes.
She fired correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. Alfonsi produced the piece on El Salvadoran prisons that Weiss tried to spike last year. It made Trump look bad.
Weiss also fired Tanya Simon. Simon has been with 60 Minutes for 30 years and was rewarded for her decication and experience with the position of executive producer about a year ago.
Under Simon's leadership, the consistently #1 news magazine show on television continued to be the #1 news magazine show on television. So it's not like Tanya Simon had wrecked a vital and successful part of CBS programming.
But Bari Weiss decided Tanya Simon had to go.
And replaced her with Nick Bilton who (you guessed it) has ZERO experience with 60 Minutes or running any kind of news magazine show.
Does CBS stand for Can't Be Serious?
Arguably the best correspondent on 60 Minutes was wondering that and Scott Pelley said so in a meeting with the new show's boss in front of everybody.
Nick Bilton responds to Scott's criticism by firing him.
Now I get there is only so much shit a boss needs to take from an employee, especially a new boss who needs to affirm he is in fact the boss. So I get that Nick Bilton needed to do something about Scott Pelley for making him look bad in front of the staff.
But...
Firing a top rated journalist for the network's #1 news magazine show seems a bit short sighted and self destructive.
Does CBS stand for "Can Be Stupid"?
Scott Pelley has not held back in his criticism of the network and the current leadership of CBS News.
Pelley said he was told to add false, misleading statements to some of his stories and the CBS News management was acting in deference to Trump administration preferences.
Does CBS stand for "Capitulating Bullied Syncophants"?
It's as if David Ellison hired an inexperienced, incompetent person to run CBS News into the ground on purpose. I can see the notorious bean counting bottom line obsessed billionaire thinking running a news organization is a financial loss for the network.
He wants Bari Weiss to drive CBS News towards destruction so he can decimate the whole thing and save a lot of money.
Killing an outlet that's mean to his li'l buddy Donnie is a nice bonus.
Does CBS stand for "Corporate Bull Shit"?
It's clear over the last year that CBS doesn't stand for much, willing to sublimate itself to the easily bruised ego of Donald Trump and his penny pinching billionaire buddies.
CBS has become an embarrassment.
The network that saw Edward R. Murrow stand bravely on the roof tops of London to report on the bombings by Nazi Germany, the network where Mike Wallace would make corporate lackeys squirm as he exposed their corruption, the network that saw Walter Cronkite speak out against the needless death of American youth in the jungles of Vietnam, this network is now known for surrendering to autocracy and soulless capitalism.
CBS "Can Be Sold" to whoever wants to pay enough money to destroy it.
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OK, there is a 2nd post coming up later this morning. The topic: is Donald Trump sleeping or merely.... blinking?
I will shoe horn into my cleverly written post some deets on Li'l Donnie's tizzy of a snit meltdown on Meet the Press yesterday.
I swear we will get away from the motherfucker on Tuesday's TV post, Wednesday's sports post and the comic book post on Thursday.
Wait! Trump gets name checked in the comic book post too? Damn it!
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