CBS News strips off radio; better to strip-down Dukoupil
By Alfred P. Doblin
CBS News Radio will cease to exist on May 22. It is an end of an era; one more sign that America’s commitment to a free, independent press is waning. The watchdog on government is becoming toothless. Next, comes the neutering. And then… well, it’s Old Yeller time.
The demise of CBS News Radio, once the home of the great Edward R. Murrow, is not unexpected. Since CBS’s parent company installed Bari Weiss as editor in chief, the news division has been upended in a frantic search for viewers and relevancy in a changed news environment.
As a former journalist, I state the obvious: News, because it is news, is always relevant. News is not entertainment. It is not a reality show; it is reality.
Yes, one reality TV star has coined – with or without his visage on the actual piece of currency – the idea that there is a surplus of fake news. There has always been disinformation, but often, it comes from the people in power claiming the real news is fake.
Today’s reality is that not enough people want the news – they want to be told what they want to be told, and if the facts get in the way, make it up.
CBS’s new evening anchor Tony Dukoupil shot a teaser for his launch as anchor chastising his industry colleagues for being in the past too focused on the elites. I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that Weiss and Dukoupil earn more money in a month than most people do in a year, so exactly who is zooming whom – and it is whom, not who.
Increasingly, people get their “news” from social media sites. My Facebook feed has been telling me all weekend that Barbra Streisand is dying. Not a single credible news source has reported that. I can only assume someone invented it to get clicks. It is a horrific thing for someone to post for the sake of momentary attention.
There was a time when such folks just pulled down their drawers in public and mooned someone. Now, we are expected to not only view their bare rumps but share the image.
Which perhaps may be the only way the CBS Evening News gets a new audience.
In recent Nielsen ratings data, the program is running third against frontrunner ABC World News Tonight and second place NBC Nightly News.
I confess that during the pandemic, I discovered CBS Mornings with Dokoupil as one of the co-hosts and I developed a serious man crush. But even for a gay man, that only goes so far. And ABC’s David Muir flexes a series bicep in promos for his show.
So, if Weiss is only focused on ratings, there is an untapped audience – gay men or those who won’t admit to it – who are watching Heated Rivalry on HBO. If it is just an audience you want, Ms. Weiss, strip-down Dukoupil, give him skates and a hockey stick, and broadcast from an ice arena.
I have nothing against Dukoupil; he appears an earnest broadcaster. He was great as a morning host. But was he ready to fill the Cronkite chair?
News organizations have always been a business. They need to make a profit, but they still need to report the news as it is, not as someone who may control the levers of power want it to be.
Because when it becomes the latter, the news story is that the so-called news organization is nothing but a sham. The emperor has no clothes and unless he can skate, I’m not going to watch.
Print media is disappearing. That’s a fact. It is sad, but good reporting hasn’t disappeared. There are still a few news organizations with robust newsrooms who are doing incredible work. And as for broadcast news, the local newsrooms were always the heart and soul of the networks. The journalists in the field, talking to people at council meetings and rushing to a local fire, were the people who could be on the ground first when the big story happened in “the middle of nowhere,” because here’s another newsflash: most people live in the “middle of nowhere.”
The idea that a highly paid face can travel around the country and understand what someone living in a Rust Belt town is feeling in a five-minute segment that was scoped out by a producer is ridiculous.
Much of news gathering is tedious, and down-right boring. But that is not the fault of the reporter; he or she cannot jazz it up. “That is the way it is,” as Cronkite would say.
Weiss and her team can slash and burn CBS News like they were Robert Duvall in a helicopter playing Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” they can install faces that are more than easy on the eye, and they can play games with the rationale for holding a story that will give them grief, but they are trying to reach an audience that is no longer there, or wanting to be there.
The audience for evening network news has shrunk. That lost revenue needs to be found elsewhere, but not at the expense of quality journalism. The Founders understood all the way back in the 18th century that an independent press was integral to the success of America’s grand experiment in democracy.
Dumb-down the news and you most assuredly will find an ill-informed society. I doubt that is a concern at CBS, so unless they take my advice to pit Dukoupil’s chest against Muir’s bicep, they will not gain new viewers. Giving people less and expecting more in return is folly, so to Bari Weiss, I say, “good night, and good luck” with your strategy. Rock beats paper, a large bicep beats a handsome face, and hot sweaty hockey players will draw more viewers than both.
And that’s the way it is.
Until next time, it’s Alfred with P