Bari Weiss's Takeover of CBS News Is Going Great

I am a subscriber and avid reader of Oliver Darcy’s Status, a newsletter that covers media news. Since its inception, however, it has mostly felt like a daily account of the decline of mainstream media. It devotes an enormous amount of copy to cable and broadcast network news, which is interesting because more people probably read about their decline than actually watch.

Bari Weiss and CBS News have obviously been a huge topic for several months. David Ellison took over Paramount and installed her as president of CBS News, which is a big deal, but it also feels like hiring a new manager for a British soccer team that has already been relegated from the Premier League to the Championship and is inevitably on its way to the third division (League One). CBS Morning News averages 2 million viewers a day, and only 354,000 in the prized 25-54 demo (there are 105 million adults in America between the ages of 25 and 54). For comparison’s sake, episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience average 11 million listeners. The New York Times podcast The Daily averages 3 million daily listeners.

Under Weiss, the network has brought in a number of new people, but I’ve never heard of most of them. Tony Dokoupil is the new anchor of CBS Evening News, but the only time I’d ever heard of him was when he was reprimanded by the old network for giving Ta-Nehisi Coates a hard time about Israel during an interview, which was probably a major factor in Weiss’s decision to hire him.

CBS News is dying. Network television is dying (look no further than the Oscars moving to YouTube). The only people who watch CBS News are retirees, and even they watch in dwindling numbers. It sucks that David Ellison hired Bari Weiss to destroy what’s left of CBS News, but also, honestly, what’s left of CBS News to destroy? It’s not like they’re putting up big numbers on YouTube, either.

Ellison clearly thought Weiss would resurrect CBS’s news division, and it already looks like he’s dead wrong. Her first major news event was a heavily promoted primetime town hall on Saturday with Erika Kirk. No one watched it. It drew 1.9 million viewers. Year over year, it suffered an 11 percent drop in the time slot and a 44 percent drop in the 25-54 demo. That was with a lead-in from the highly rated Army-Navy college football game.

It flopped so hard that Bari Weiss has reportedly delayed an internal town hall to discuss the future of CBS News until next year. Plans for future town halls now seem to be up in the air. She isn’t resurrecting CBS News. There is nothing left to resurrect. Viewers do not get their news from network television. The only news CBS News is generating is how badly it’s performing. When the president interrupted Survivor to deliver his pointless, lie-filled speech last night, it was the first time I’d seen Norah O’Donnell in what feels like years.

I know we should all be furious that CBS News hired the inexperienced Weiss to run a news network, but it also feels like SNL hiring Kill Tony protégé Kaleb Patterson for SNL. So far, he’s been far less relevant than he was before. Weiss, likewise, is already less relevant than she was when she was simply running The Free Press. Legacy media is dead, and Bari Weiss is stuck in a funeral procession, frantically trying to revive a corpse. It may be the worst thing that’s happened to CBS News, but it might also be the worst thing to happen to Weiss’s career. Whatever “outsider” appeal she once had is gone. And David Ellison? It increasingly looks like David Ellison spent $8 billion to run Paramount into the ground — CBS News is a failure and he chased off Taylor Sheridan — which is even more reason to keep him far away from Warner Bros. Discovery.