CBS: A Week of Bad Calls, Logistical Screwups, and Flying Furniture

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Jennifer Schulze

It was another jaw-dropping week at CBS. To protest the network’s politically-motivated cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s top-rated late night show, Colbert and David Letterman flung office furniture off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater aiming it squarely at the infamous CBS eyemark logo. While the furniture was flying, problems at the news wing of the company also continued to soar.

Questionable editorial decisions dogged a key interview on 60 Minutes, embarrassing mistakes landed evening news anchor Tony Dokoupil in the wrong country for the Xi-Trump summit and audiences continued to look elsewhere for their news. The CBS Evening News just had its fifth week in a row with under 4 million viewers.

CBS isn’t just covering the news. It is in the news, as journalists continue to document its questionable calls, internal flubs, and on-air issues. Chaos and political meddling now define the once great news giant, not journalism. What a colossal shame.

The decline of CBS is also a big joke. “CBS News: when events happen, we’re at most one country away.” That was part of Colbert’s opening monologue on the same night as the furniture-flinging segment with Letterman. Like CBS News, Colbert is a victim of the company’s overall rightward shift and Donald Trump appeasement campaign. With just a handful of shows left, Colbert is punching through to the end.

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/cbs-a-week-of-bad-calls-logistical

[sop]

1. I thought it was something from 'The Onion' when I first heard about Dokoupil's visa fuck up.

What a joke CBS News has become, the network promoted the program by saying Dokoupil was anchoring “LIVE from the region." Dokoupil's cameraman even passed out during the broadcast:

"During a live segment from his setup in Taiwan, the camera abruptly began to shake and a loud thud was heard as his cameraman, Randy Schmidt, suffered a sudden medical emergency. Dokoupil paused mid-sentence to call for a doctor and the network quickly shifted to a commercial break, later clarifying that the crew member was recovering well."

https://www.wonderwall.com/news/tony-dokuopil-broadcasts-from-taipei-after-visa-drama/?utm_source=rss_newsbreak

[Warpy]

2. CBS, when it was a stand alone corporation,

isolated its news department from machinations by the BOD and corporate honchos, meaning the broadcast mostly sided with the facts for a very long time. That was ended by corpat merger folllowed by corporate mega merger and now the news department is vulnerable to wingnuts at the top. The Republicans have wanted to destroy fact based journalism for a long time and CBS News was their biggest trophy.

They have tried to turn the news and 60 Minutes into Pox News before this with similar results. These are not missteps or blunders, it's all part of the plan. It consistently fails because they turn off the network's traditional centrist to slightly liberal viewers while failing to attract Pox viewers who are brand loyal. Advertisers flee,m the wingnut in charge of dragging them to the far right gets the axe, and a centrist or tepid liberal is brought in quietly to try to clean up the mess.

Likely this will keephappening until antitrust laws can be invoked and media consolidation is undone or media companies of all description are declared public utilities and subject to regulation, at which point megacorporations will become allergic to them and cut them loose.