This administration has seen more people willing to bend the knee than a Richard Simmons VHS. So how about some refreshing standing-up for a change?
Last night on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Scott Pelley, resident chisel-jawed silverdaddy, had some words to say about his bosses at Paramount and the resignation of “60 Minutes” and CBS News Executive Producer Bill Owens last week. A minute worth a watch!
Or we will transcribe for you:
In tonight’s last minute, a note on Bill Owens, who until this past week was executive producer of “60 Minutes.” He was our boss. Bill was with CBS News nearly 40 years, 26 years at “60 Minutes.” He covered the world, covered combat, the White House. His was a quest to open minds, not close them. If you’ve ever worked hard for a boss because you admired him then you understand what we’ve enjoyed here. Bill resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard on us, but he did it for us and you. Stories we pursued for 57 years were often controversial, lately the Israel/Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company Paramount is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it. But in resigning Bill proved one thing: He was the right person to lead “60 Minutes” all along.
Go Scott Pelley, calling out the merger and his greedy kowtowing bosses right there. Standing up like one of those old people who volunteered to repair Japan’s Fukushima reactor! Wonder how much longer he’ll last?
To backstory, since last July CBS’s parent company Paramount Global — controlled by Shari Redstone, who inherited it from her father Sumner — has been trying to merge with Skydance Media, an entertainment company backed by the billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David. Just two multimillionaire nepo babies trying to make it in a cold, cruel world.
But the FCC must approve the merger, and of course Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr are in charge of that. And Carr is a Project 2025 author who has long put it right out there that he thinks the FCC and government should be in the business of monitoring platforms and shutting them down if they won’t push right-wing propaganda.
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CBS’s ass-kissery of Trump first got eyebrow-raising and un-ignorable October, when it said it would not live fact-check the debate between Coach Tim Walz and Butthair VonCouch.
Though Margaret Brennan could not help herself, and interjected that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were there legally, actually, making Butthair squeal with outrage: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!”
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Then soon after, candidate Trump backed out of his scheduled appearance on “60 Minutes,” and sued CBS for damages between $75k and $10 BILLION dollars, claiming CBS “deceptively edited” an interview with Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes” so she would unfairly not look like a ginormous dumdum saying word salads.
CBS rushed to settle, even though Trump has no case, what with the First Amendment and all. And also his lack of damages, the whiner won the election. And their offer to settle apparently only emboldened him, which is how it goes with bullies: in February he decided he was owed $20 BILLION now, under the Lanham Act, because CBS was doing unfair competition with his shitty web platform, or something. And he added Captain Alleged Pill-Pusher Ronny Jackson as a plaintiff too, as a consumer of news who was “deceived and misled” into thinking Kamala Harris was smart. Then That Man ranted and raved some more on his shitty web platform that CBS should lose its license and be punished and blah blah blah.
We strongly suspect what likely actually pissed Trump off was that after he dropped out of his “60 Minutes” interview, because they would not agree to not fact-check, they broasted him and his tiny little chicken balls on air about it.
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That lawsuit is ongoing, and the two parties are due to meet with a mediator on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Skydance and Paramount would like to merge.
Skydance is perhaps best known for producing such smash films as the Spy Kids sequel, the Mission: Impossible sequels four through eight, the GI Joe sequel, and the Transformers sequel. Yet somehow it has been unprofitable since 2021! And Paramount owns some valuable properties too: CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, the film production studio that made The Godfather and Titanic, and a streaming service that inexplicably takes forever to load old episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” And Paramount has also been losing a lot of money, and its market value has fallen from $25.3 billion in 2019 to $8.4 billion now.
But instead of maybe getting people on board who can figure out how to squeeze actual money out of the company, these two sinking companies want to join forces, and are trying to please Dear Leader and get his approval. They have both separately pledged to not do DEI any more, and Shari Redstone reportedly inserted herself into CBS’s news-decision making, demanding that CEO George Cheeks tell her if the news division planned to say anything problematic about Dear Leader. But it seems “60 Minutes” producer Bill Owens ignored her “feedback,” and most recently ran a story about Trump’s cuts to the NIH anyway.
Who knows what the final rub was there, but Owens resigned last Tuesday, with an emotional note to his staff, including:
Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for “60 Minutes,” right for the audience. So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.
Which rather sounds like Redstone was threatening to ax the entire show in spite of it being the highest-rated news program on not-cable TV, if it would please Papa Trump.
According to audio of the meeting, Owens told staff, “I do think this will be a moment for the corporation to take a hard look at itself and its relationship with us.” Yeah, we’ll see.
Of course you don’t have to be a psychic here to see that the FCC is almost surely never going to approve this merger. Maybe if they make Brendan Carr head of programming. Or launch some new reality shows, like where white women compete in challenges for a vial of Elon Musk’s sperm, or makeover shows where everyone gets Mar-a-Lago face and duck lips. MTV only playing Lee Greenwood, Kid Rock, Kanye, Carrie Underwood and Gwen Stefani. “60 Minutes,” investigating why Trump is more popular than both Cats! the musical, and cats, the housepet. Exposes on how to cure measles with horse paste. Maybe they will replace Scott Pelley with Tucker Carlson?
Anyway, good for Scott Pelley. If you don’t have your integrity, what have you got?
Now we need a stretch!
OPEN THREAD!
[WSJ / Bloomberg]
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