Bill Owens, executive producer of television’s most popular and influential newsmagazine since 2019, said in a note to staff that it has “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.”
“The show is too important to the country,” he wrote. “It has to continue, just not with me as the executive producer.”
At the same time, CBS parent Paramount Global, run by Shari Redstone, is seeking approval for a merger with Skydance Media, founded by Larry Ellison. They are reportedly in mediation to settle the lawsuit with Trump, a prospect that has been bitterly opposed by Owens and others at “60 Minutes.”
“this show is so important, it must continue, but instead of dying on that hill and getting fired, I’m gonna quit so I can be replaced by someone who won’t rock the boat”
It’s the same as all the times you hear about small companies “making it” because they managed to get bought out. IMO, just like how I don’t think success is using money as a high score, I don’t think “fighting fascism” means washing your hands of anything to do with it.
I think there’s some distinction there. The founder selling out is one thing. But private equity, VC, etc all want a return on their investment and once you IPO, you become a fiduciary. Those companies produced a tool and sold it to a customer that by definition is required to be unethical.
But I agree that fighting implies an active component to it.
Isn’t it amazing how so many people have used the reasoning “I want to fight fascism, and I think the best way to do it is to quit and give my job to a fascist”?
Yeah, I agree. Force them to fire you. Resigning in protest has no benefit when the powers that be have no ethics whatsoever.
You know he does have to consider the safety of himself/his family, not to mention his professional career.
I agree this is an important hill to die on, but we’re a little presumptuous if we think we can make that decision for someone else. We don’t really know what is informing his decision at the end of the day.
Yeah, you’d think a guy in that position would be smarter. If you don’t fight facism, you’ve already lost.
Although he could be afraid I guess.
probably looking for another gig.
can’t wait to see which former faux news producer gets the gig.
You used the word right (an ordinarily would be a wonderful pun), but just in case, I want to point out that “faux” is provided “foe” and not “fox”.
Sounds like maybe we should be more interested to see what Bill Owens does next.
Well, HBO has Oliver, Apple had Stewart, so I’d wager with a Disney/ABC streaming news show, unless they have one.
Apple lost Stewart because they didn’t allow him to even talk about China.
Yeah, I knew as soon as he signed up it wouldn’t last. Apple is not known as a bastion of free will. Everything they do is a walled garden.
Pete Hegseth is going to be needing a job soon.
can’t wait for all the sweet puff pieces with conservatives.
Is this a crack pipe joke
It appears one of them will be looking for a new job soon, so this is good timing.
Challenges to the citizenship birthright, bypassing due process and courts, deporting legal residents, putting them in a famously brutal concentration camp, and now taking more news media companies captive under the accusation that they’re the “lying press.” Yep, totally normal.
approval for a merger with Skydance Media
NO
STOP IT
Actually enforce anti-trust instead
That department has been RIFed.
I wonder if this lawsuit could also affect The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
on the bright side, maybe Colbert will have to go back to doing The Colbert Report
That show wouldn’t work anymore, Colbert got out of that at the exact right time. No matter how ridiculous of a parody of the right wing he could come up with, the real life idiots would be saying and doing things even more ridiculous the next day.
basically Onion is no longer relevant as well.
lol, that’s true. good point
That would be a net benefit for society.
Comedy Cental is owned by Paramount, which also owns CBS. It’s more likely the Daily Show would be a casualty.
You’ve got fascists in charge. It’s going to be a hard fight to keep any kind of free press or broadcasting going.
I sure hope so. Colbert is a pompous dick.
I mean tbf people have been calling 60 minutes a legacy production of the bygone era of quality journalism for years now.
You’re half-right.
It’s real, researched, well-produced journalism which is definitely a relic of the past at this point.
I don’t think that’s what you were saying, though. Since your opinion hinges on what “people have been calling” it, I think you probably don’t watch it and believe that since it’s an old show and format, it must be inferior to… sound bites, inflammatory remarks, click/rage-bait, “X slammed Y,” etc.
And that’s sad.
Actually I did use to watch it quite often.
My point was not that it dropped in quality, it’s just that it became slow to keep up with ongoing events with details and information readily available via basic OSINT on primary sources or even regular quality news outlets.
Ex: https://youtu.be/dRRJmOTCqqQ
Pretty much everything presented in this report was already well known and available for months, making the the rest essentially a PR moneyshot for the US Navy.
I still watch it occasionally for its direct interviews with select people, but it’s still a legacy production that struggles to keep up with info you can get even from AP or Reuters.
Mind you it’s still miles better than flaming trash like Washington Post or NYT, but I could easily see CBS axeing it years ago.
It’s been in decay for a while, thanks to corporate and ultra-conservative ideological interests leaning on it. A lot more of the content has drifted towards anti-immigrant fearmongering, pro-war jingoism, and paleoconservative fixations on Big Government (in the form of social programs rather than police power) and public debt. The parade of hagiographies for the ultra-wealthy and the endless pumping of tech sector vaporware haven’t been great, either.
But enshittification has been strangling every major television news publication for a long while now. Owens isn’t exactly a radical. He made his bones giving Bush Jr an hour long platform in between 9/11 retrospectives on the eve of the 2002 election and then spent a big chunk of his career producing glossy sports media spreads for the benefit of some of the most shamelessly corrupt billionaires in the country. Since taking the “60 Minutes” producer’s desk, he’s bent over backwards to accommodate the studio’s biggest advertisers.
If the job is too miserable for him now, I have to assume it is because he is just answering angry phone call after angry phone call from a corporate advertising base that’s plunged right off the reactionary cliff.
I mean, they are also responsible for making news a for-profit enterprise, which has arguably ultimately killed it.
