Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
This week, CBS’s new management team ordered a round of cuts in employees, including Veteran Journalist Lisa Ling. According to The New York Post, CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, has axed over 1,000 jobs this past week as part of a cost-cutting initiative that started in August after the merger worth $8 billion closed. The layoffs came not long after their new Editor-In-Chief, Bari Weiss, and network President Tom Cibroski began major changes, including ending the Race and Culture unit, shuttering the Johannesburg bureau, and cancelling two streaming platforms.
According to The Guardian, the cuts were announced on Wednesday morning in a memo sent out to CBS staffers by David Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount Skydance. The memo reads, “In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization. In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities, and the new structure is designed to strengthen our focus on growth. Ultimately, these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success.”
Weiss’ response about the layoffs to her colleagues and staffers during a meeting was “This is just an enormously difficult day for so many people who have given years of their lives to this company, and I’m sorry, and want to support everyone in whatever way I can,” she ended by saying that her “door is open.”
Some other anchors laid off include Michelle Miller and Dana Jacobson, co-anchors of the CBS Saturday morning version of the CBS Morning Show. They join Tony Dokoupil and Adriana Diaz the hosts of CBS Morning Plus, and John Dickerson, host of CBS Evening News Plus. Because of these layoffs, the Saturday edition of CBS Mornings will be merged staffing-wise with the staff of the weekday edition of the program as part of an overhaul and new format.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS is not only closing its Johannesburg bureau but also its South Africa bureau, leaving the London bureau to have oversight over the whole region. Many TV news divisions have recently scaled back on their foreign bureaus, with overseas correspondents being the first to go most times during major restructurings.
Additionally, while streaming can be a beneficial investment for TV news, their low-scale viewership can make it hard to monetize in comparison to their counterparts. CBS made the decision to axe CBS Morning Plus and CBS Evening News Plus, which were extensions of the on-air shows that viewers could pay to watch. So far, a source told The Hollywood Reporter that the cuts and layoffs have impacted every area of the news division as of now.
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