from the fake-news dept
U.S. media mergers at all times observe the identical trajectory. Pre-merger, executives promise all method of wonderful synergies and deal advantages. Publish-merger, not solely do these advantages usually by no means arrive, the debt from the acquisition spree often leads to important layoffs, decrease high quality product, and better charges for shoppers. The Time Warner Discovery catastrophe was the poster child for this phenomenon.
It’s a foolish, hole sport. With streaming development saturated and executives all out of authentic concepts, the one technique to goose quarterly earnings and generate new tax breaks is “development for development’s sake” consolidation. Such consolidation creates the phantasm that these are savvy deal makers creating revolutionary new issues, however as we’ve seen repeatedly this kind of media consolidation is mindlessly corrosive.
Proper on schedule, Larry and David Ellison’s $8 billion acquisition of CBS is following this well-tread path.
The huge debt incurred from this and different offers (just like the $7.7 billion bid for exclusive MMA rights, and the $150 million acquisition of Bari Weiss’ weird troll blog) is already leading to a wave of layoffs as the corporate tries to chop prices, which (absolutely fully coincidentally look like disproportionately impacting women and minorities):
“Eight on-air correspondents and hosts got their pink slips – and all of them are girls, with half of them folks of coloration. In response to three sources with data of the state of affairs, a male correspondent was initially included on the layoff checklist however was eliminated after he appealed on to the brand new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, main to a different feminine correspondent being added to the checklist on the final minute.“
Good. Stylish. We’ve famous how Bari Weiss, a “contrarian” proper wing opinion troll who has failed upward into her new job at CBS Information (regardless of no severe expertise in precise journalism), was employed by Ellison to make sure that CBS is nicer to far right wingers like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu (the softening of the latter’s ongoing struggle crimes being clearly important to Larry and Bari alike).
Whereas Weiss is busy firing black and feminine staff and journalists, she’s apparently beneath the impression that she’s necessary sufficient to warrant a $10,000 a day security detail:
“Web page Six hears that as staffers watch their colleagues pack up their desks, they’re additionally studying that the safety element for brand new CBSNews boss Bari Weiss prices the corporate 5 figures on daily basis. Insiders inform us that eight bodyguards encompass the Free Press founder always, and she or he’s shuttled round in a caravan of SUVs, very similar to the president and vice chairman.”
Weiss is busy eyeballing new CBS information hosts to interchange those she already fired, and most of them (unsurprisingly) look like coming over from Fox News. People like Weiss will vehemently deny this (probably even to herself), however the Ellisons’ purpose right here is to demolish no matter was left of CBS’ already fairly flimsy journalism, and switch the outlet into yet one more proper wing propaganda mill (see: Sinclair, Fox Information, Breitbart, Newsmax, OANN) financed by earnings from the infotainment arm (once more, very similar to Fox).
That’s the plan, anyway. There’s no indication that this bizarre assortment of fail-upward brunchlords, nepobabies, and authoritarian apologists will truly succeed. The media marketplace for billionaire ass kissing is fairly saturated (see: WAPO), U.S. media is an unforgiving and ever-changing mess being endlessly disrupted by new media and piracy, and all of us noticed what occurred when AT&T tried to purchase their technique to trendy media domination (spoiler: they fled screaming toward the exits after setting billions on fireplace).
It’s way more doubtless this effort stumbles round drunkenly for a number of years, earlier than your entire mess is offloaded to some clumsy new suitor in a number of years permitting the pointless cycle to start anew.
Filed Below: bari weiss, consolidation, david ellison, journalism, larry ellison, layoffs, media, mergers, propaganda
Corporations: cbs, paramount, skydance
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