It's really way, way, way too soon to change the perception of CBS by most of the new potential viewers. Nothing that is flavored with politics can make that sort of change quickly, if ever.
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"Newsroom culture clash" at CBS News
- Thread starter Mark Roberts
- Start date
But what does any of this have to do with your claim that reporters are asking questions about confidential strategic information?
If they are, so what? Nobody is required to answer any question on any subject. It's all voluntary.
When I pointed out to you that no reporters are asking questions that involve confidential strategic information, you changed the subject. Now you talk about stupid questions. But the point of doing an interview isn't about the questions. It's about the answers. You're focusing on the wrong side.
We have lots of radio companies losing money, and nobody seems to be shutting them down.
It reinforces the fact that there is a considerable frequency of stupid or nonsensical questions from all types of reporters.
Asking about "what is next" or things like using a nuke sure fall into strategic questions.
If you get a lot of stupid questions, the respondent is likely to start poking fun at the reporters.
This is different. You have a large investor buying a company that owns relatively small divisions like CBS and CNN. They already closed CBS radio, and could easily close or spin off the cable net or CBS itself. Or move CBS out of OTA broadcasting into a pure content producer teamed with the movie studios.
The pure radio plays have no larger parent division (although iHeart is trying to create one based on streaming and podcasts), so "closing" means liquidation. In the case of Ellison, he can prune the non-productive divisions entirely or reform them totally without seriously affecting the larger enterprise.
Nobody cares.
Once again, nobody is required to answer any questions.
That's usually when the respondent says something that was unintended, and it goes viral. Mission accomplished.
Remember that the media isn't in the question business. It's in the business of attracting viewers to sell them to advertisers. Just having the president get angry will get both sides interested, and that means money. The president knows how to play the game, and doesn't care about national security or anything else. He's running his own social media company that's making money every time he tweets. His posts aren't models of literacy either.
They have cable networks in a whole lot worse shape, starting with MTV and VH1. At some point they have to deal with the real problems at WBD, And Ellison isn't a broadcaster. He's a movie producer. He really doesn't care about any of it.
Not true. In a number of recent situations where I have been with working journalists and news editors, they all cared.
There have been numerous "guesstimates" that conclude that Trumps social media enterprise does not make money. It is part of a strategy, but apparently not a profit center.
And it is likely they have less public ideas of what to do with those divisions. The MTV production division is apparently profitable, though.
He's a businessman. He seems to be looking at OTA broadcasting as something near end of life, and the same for cable channels that provide content to cable TV systems, which are also in decline.,
So why did he buy them.
That means he's just another media company, no different from the companies he attacks and sues.
Obviously not a very smart businessman, since he was tricked into overpaying for both companies that he will end up destroying.
They came as part of the package. Sort of like buying a house, knowing the bathrooms need a refreshing or re-modelling. So you make changes, throw out the old porcelain contraptions and get a new tub, toilet and washbowl. You just made the purchase more appealing to yourself.
I looked over the Ellisons' business histories, and there don't seem to be failures there.
Obviously, some parts of the purchase are worth less than other to them. This is sort of like our two relatively new cars: both have heaters. We don't go to the mountains, and in the summer it gets to 125° here. But the heaters came with the cars, and I could not even order one without a heater.
They didn’t come with the package. Netflix didn’t want the tv stations just the studio. Ellison decided he wanted everything.
Netflix did not get the deal. So Ellison had to take the "past expiration date" produce along with the fresh stuff. And he got the deal.
That's a really bad analogy. Each of these companies were created by multiple mergers. Ellison could very easily bought just the parts he wanted and paid a whole lot less. But we all know what they say about a fool and his money. He created the problems he now has.
He didn't have to do anything. Nobody put a gun to his head. He very willingly pulled the trigger.
It reminds me of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Shoot me now!
He got the deal because he bid more and he did not leave the seller with assets that would be hard to sell alone. So he took the trash out in exchange for a seat at the adults dining table.
Because he thought the deal made sense. His model is obviously different than the one Netflix had, or Netflix would have made a new and higher bid.
During consolidations hot years of the late 90's, more deals than I can count included some AMs and some rimshot FMs that nobody wanted. But to do the deal, the buyer took them.
By saying that, you agree with me that he overpaid for obsolete assets he didn't want. He's a rich kid who's spending daddy's money because he doesn't know any better. Bravo! He wanted to buy a Lamborghini, so he bought the entire factory because he can. Then he'll shut the factory down because he doesn't know anything about the car business. Rich kid spending daddy's money.
I owned stock in both companies. I owned Paramount and Warner Discovery. Not controlling interest, but I owned enough that I had to make a decision. In both cases, I was sent tender offers for my stock. In each case I sat down with my financial advisor and discussed the tender offer. In both cases we decided it was way more money than the stock was worth, and I would be an absolute fool to turn it down. So I sold. It's his problem. I no longer own obsolete assets. He does.
No. It didn't make sense. He did the deal because he's a rich kid spending his daddy's money. Netflix could see this. Anyone who's ever been to an auction has seen someone come in to bid up the price because there's someone who has money to burn. That's what the Netflix offer was about. He had no intention to buy anything other than the studio. He didn't have to buy it. He already has a licensing deal with WBD. But he made an offer with a penalty that if he was outbid, the winner would have to pay him $2 billion. That's what happened. So he made money by forcing a Ellison to overpay. He went to the white house and told that to Trump, who was so impressed that he bought Netflix stock. He didn't buy any stock in Paramount.
Ellison reminds me of Edgar Bronfman Jr. who inherited his family's company: Seagram's. He didn't want to work in his family liquor business. He wanted to be in the music business. So he squandered his family fortune to buy his way into Warner Music and ruined what was once a successful company because he didn't know anything about the music business but had lots of family money. That's in essence what's happening here. It's bad news for CBS and all of the other broadcasting & cable parts of the company. They will become collateral damage because junior doesn't know what he's doing. Too bad for the thousands of people who work there, and too bad for the millions who watch TV. But that's what happens when rich kids spend their daddy's money to buy a seat at the adult dining table because they're too stupid and don't have the knowledge & skill to actually EARN it.
In a related story, the president attended a private party held by Paramount's David Ellison and CBS News journalists Friday night. The president spoke for an hour.
www.thewrap.com
variety.com
Trump Spoke for 'Nearly an Hour' at David Ellison's DC Dinner as Paramount Vies for Merger Clearance From Fed
The dinner held in the president's honor came Thursday as Paramount vies for federal clearance on their Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
www.thewrap.com
CBS News’ Bari Weiss, Norah O’Donnell Among Attendees at David Ellison’s Dinner Party ‘Honoring’ Donald Trump and the First Amendment
Donald Trump delivered remarks for 'nearly an hour' at the dinner party David Ellison hosted "honoring" Trump.
variety.com
Gross
In a related story, the president attended a private party held by Paramount's David Ellison and CBS News journalists Friday night. The president spoke for an hour.
Trump Spoke for 'Nearly an Hour' at David Ellison's DC Dinner as Paramount Vies for Merger Clearance From Fed
The dinner held in the president's honor came Thursday as Paramount vies for federal clearance on their Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
CBS News’ Bari Weiss, Norah O’Donnell Among Attendees at David Ellison’s Dinner Party ‘Honoring’ Donald Trump and the First Amendment
Donald Trump delivered remarks for 'nearly an hour' at the dinner party David Ellison hosted "honoring" Trump.
This story shows corruption at its finest. The stockholders approve the merger, then daddy's rich kid hosts a dinner with the U.S. president speaking and with the head of the U.S. Department of Justice, the same Department of Justice that has to approve or disapprove of the merger in attendance. *None of this* would have occurred (certainly not publicly) before Donald Trump was elected a second time as U.S. president.
And while I have my criticisms of unregulated free market capitalism, what we saw at Thursday night's dinner had nothing to do with that and everything to do with crony capitalism where you thank and pay off the guy who is responsible for insuring that your merger goes through. @AbrahamJSimpson is absolutely right! This is gross and far, far away from the ideals on which the United States was founded.
We agree, as we often do, for separate or distinct reasons.
I don't think this is a "rich kid". I think he is a smart kid, counseled and trained by a brilliant strategist with a huge competitive spirit. If you read about Larry Ellison's sailing competitiveness, you know that he is, well, almost ruthless in such situations. The kid has decades of experience learning from a master.
Again, he's using the biggest thing that his father gave him: business sense. Will it work? No guarantee... but his father was known for taking risks. Right now, dad is risking many billions on AI as he tries to make Oracle an AI based data system.
But with those obsolete assets, he got the gold-standard currency in entertainment: content and content creation structures.
I disagree. His dad is more than just a venture capitalist here... Larry is the advisor and I believe every detail of the deal was examined by him before his son made any moves.
But Netflix has a different business model, and it does not include ancillary services or companies. The Ellison strategy is broader, more like a big net being cast over entertainment options.
All this comes down to is the fact that some on this board do not see the potential of making CBS TV something other than the oldest-leaning and ratings lagging network. That statement covers both entertainment shows and news, all of which have horrible demographics.
For over two decades, CBS tried to convince agencies and their clients that demographic targeting should include 50-65. But Broadcast TV still looks first at 18-49 because that is what advertisers seek when and if they buy network television. At the CEO levels, CBS met with the biggest agencies and advertisers and pushed adding older demos to the marketing target of those companies. Their success was, to say the least, minimal.
But broadcast TV still carries a lot of the weight of the cost of producing content that can be used on streaming services like Paramount+. And that content is a positive magnet, at least for those over 30 or so, in selling those streaming services.
Before anything, the Ellison family has acute business skills. They are immersed in the possibilities of technology, or Oracle would not be so dominant in its field. The same strategies used in data software and systems are, at their core, business strategies. I think senior and junior see "the entertainment wave crashing on the beach" and they want to reassemble it the way they project the future to be.
Among rumors I have heard... from rather faithful sources... is that one of the Oracle development projects is to create entertainment entirely through AI. If that is indeed true... and it sounds like a logical synergy... that justifies the purchase all by itself.
There is no proof of this... to the contrary, he seems capable and has a brilliant advisor.
CBS already was in trouble and those jobs were shrinking as new media takes over.
We agree, as we often do, for separate or distinct reasons.
I have nothing more to add to my previous comments.
If they are losing tens of millions, the revenue doesn't matter unless expenses can be brought into line.