CBS News has been in desperate need of this shakeup, which, if reports are accurate, will result in a revamp of the network's morning show behind Gayle King, put Norah O'Donnell at the anchor desk of "CBS Evening News," and reshuffle a host of other assignments.
And at least the network has the right person in place to lead this upheaval. Susan Zirinsky, the new president of CBS News, is a brilliant producer, awash in ideas and energy — qualities in short supply at CBS for years.
Despite having a batch of excellent journalists still on staff — though fewer than it needs — what CBS News has mostly been known for in the recent past is moribund ratings for its daily flagship programs and hugely embarrassing — and appalling — sex scandals. Those involved were Charlie Rose of "CBS This Morning," Jeff Fager, who was also the executive producer of the jewel of the organization, "60 Minutes," and the network's chief executive, Leslie Moonves, who made all the big calls about who ran the news division — and how much money it got to cover the news.
That's enough reason for a radical re-imagining. But there's at least one more, and it is, if anything, even more telling: The only reason news of this shakeup might come as a surprise to anyone who follows the media world would be that they haven't really thought about CBS News for a long time — at least not as a significant player in the big leagues of national journalism.
During a period of enormous news headlines, generated virtually every day for about three years, most of them covering the biggest political story since Watergate, how much of the important news did CBS News break?
To its credit, last week CBS News did have a good scoop about John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff, joining the board of directors of the company owning the largest shelter housing unaccompanied immigrant children, part of the much-protested Trump Administration immigration policy. But CBS has chiefly followed competitors' news breaks on ongoing Washington stories.
At a time when competitors in the news business — ABC News, NBC News and CNN — and the big newspaper organizations — the New York Times, the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal — have all punched out award-winning scoops, not only on the Russian election interference story but across the whole spectrum of skullduggery and scandal, political infighting, policy controversies and endless prevarication from the top, CBS News has been notably either absent or a distinctly minor player.
That is a distressing contrast to the network's one-time position as a prime purveyor of breaking news. Certainly that was true in the Watergate days, when a president under fire confronted a White House correspondent, Dan Rather, by name because of CBS's hard-edged coverage.
But that's history so ancient it might as well have been in the era of hieroglyphics. And that's truly the sad story of CBS News. While a monster story is enveloping the media world, sad-eyed folks from CBS seem to be gathered in a pub somewhere, talking of Edward Murrow and Walter Cronkite, while Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" plays on an endless loop.
This isn't a particularly new development. For a long time, CBS News has been running on the fumes of an increasingly distant reputation.
In the two franchise daily broadcasts, CBS is simply not competitive. In the morning, where CBS was making some headway before Rose had to be fired, CBS now usually trails its competitors at ABC and NBC by 800,000 to 900,000 viewers. In the evening news ratings (which, surprisingly, in this era of network diminishment still produce well over 20 million viewers among them every night), CBS is behind NBC by about 2 million viewers and ABC by about 3 million.
"60 Minutes" still holds its own in the ratings, but the publicity lately has been bruising. Fager was forced out amid widespread accusations of "boys' club" bad behavior, and last week Oprah Winfrey said she quit the show because it expected her to smother her emotional style — her signature strength as arguably the most successful personality in television history.
The "Sunday Morning" show is still beloved and it sometimes helps "Face the Nation" to competitive ratings in the Washington talk-show competition. The division shows some strong colors on occasion, especially at "60 Minutes," which dominates awards among newsmagazines (it's the only one left still doing serious work). "This Morning" did an excellent job covering a sexual assault story at the Air Force Academy, and its Gayle King has stood out with some terrific interviews in recent months.
But, overall, programs at CBS News are not at the peak of the profession and have not been for some time.
News has simply not been a high priority. Under Moonves, who was masterful at keeping the old-line business of broadcast television delivering huge profits, the news division was expected to be respectable, and not much more. Chasing the pre-eminence of the lost age of CBS News was never going to help the network's all-important bottom line, especially if covering the nation and the world was going to continue to be a loss-leader endeavor.
So the news division learned to live within its means. Presumably that it is still going to be the case, which will likely limit the options available to Zirinsky to effect substantial change.
In some ways, what's happened at CBS News resembles what's happened to news organizations across the world of media, most of which were hidebound in their thinking about how technology was changing everything. Local newspapers are a shadow of their former selves; so are the news operations at many local television stations. It takes big resources to play in the world of contemporary news coverage.
What CBS News probably needs is its own Jeff Bezos. The brand of CBS News still carries genuine weight, just as the brand of the Washington Post did. But until recently the Post was sliding, becoming a shell of its former greatness, afflicted by the same devastation of advertising abandonment that has wrecked the finances of local newspapers. Bezos, with billions burning holes in his pockets — or maybe his civic consciousness — decided to invest in the Post and help it to re-commit to journalistic prominence (and greatness).
Where CBS (CBS) management is headed is uncertain, perhaps to a re-combination with Viacom (VIA). But whatever happens on the corporate side, a commitment by management to give Zirinsky the resources she needs to lift CBS News back to at least competitive status with NBC and ABC is unlikely to materialize — unless there's another billionaire somewhere who might want to take the news division off their hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment