Paramount’s mega-merger with Warner Bros. Discovery is finally in the clear — and hopes and fears that Bari Weiss is now poised to become the queen of TV news broadcasting are coming to a head.
It’s no secret that the 42-year-old editor-in-chief of CBS News has been eyeing a takeover of the left-leaning CNN as Paramount’s $81 billion acquisition of the cable network’s owner WBD is getting cleared in a truce with 12 state attorneys general led by California AG Rob Bonta.
“Bari is large and in charge,” one media industry executive told me this week, recounting the Tuesday-morning chatter in media circles.
A well-placed source close to the situation, however, countered just hours later that speculation that Weiss is about to take control of CNN “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The question of Weiss’ future has been a constant source of speculation in the media business since David Ellison appointed the former opinion columnist to run CBS ahead of his hard-fought purchase of Warner Bros Discovery.
Driving all of this has been Ellison’s conviction that the news business needs to reflect less progressive media bias. Ellison hired Weiss to provide more centrist coverage of the news at the famously woke Tiffany Network.
It’s notable that Ellison has stuck by Weiss throughout her controversial reign at CBS, including the turmoil at “60 Minutes” where he has supported her recent, unorthodox hires to change the face of the famed news magazine.
After California’s Bonta finally cut a deal backing away from the tough structural reforms he initially demanded, it seemed like a given that Ellison would flex his power by giving Weiss more clout.
So what’s going to happen? A spokeswoman declined to comment, but just connecting the dots, you can see why Ellison might be hesitant to give Weiss the gargantuan task of running two major news divisions.
Weiss is no dummy, of course. She created the successful news website “The Free Press,” which Ellison bought as part of his move to make her CBS News chief. Yet her tenure at CBS has been controversial even if Ellison is a strong believer in the non-woke ethos she’s bringing to coverage. A major question is whether it’s working from a business standpoint.
As The Post has reported, “60 Minutes”’ second episode in its first season under Weiss and her hand-picked EP Nick Bilton, did pretty well – over 6.5 million viewers last Sunday, a bit more than last year – but the audience share fell from its first episode by around 18%.
A few weeks of mixed ratings aren’t enough to go on, but David Ellison and dad Larry and their partners at RedBird Capital now have the arduous task of running a company with $80 billion in debt and a directive to find what investment bankers call “synergies” between businesses where there’s overlap like CNN and CBS.
People close to the Ellisons say they will likely bring in outside management to combine the help to manage the operation. That will mean cuts or as another media insider put it: “They’re going to slash and burn to make their numbers.”
Whether Weiss is the right person to handle all of that is still an open question, I am told. She could be given some responsibilities over CNN, but I am told the Ellisons don’t want her bogged down in the heavy lifting of the “slash and burn,” so as one person close to the company says “she can focus on working with talent.”
Focusing on working with talent doesn’t sound like running two major news divisions. In other words, stay tuned.