Bari Weiss speaks at a town hall with Erika Kirk. (Screen grab via CBS News)
In the days leading up to the holidays, Bari Weiss had planned to address CBS News staffers with a broader vision of where she sees the network heading under her new leadership. But by Tuesday, as early Nielsen numbers for her high-profile Erika Kirk town hall circulated—and headlines began using words like “flop”—those plans quietly changed.
According to multiple people familiar with the matter, Weiss decided not to hold the previously planned internal town hall this month, opting instead to push it to the new year. The decision came just as the network was grappling with underwhelming ratings for a broadcast it had heavily promoted as a signal of its new editorial direction.
Although the network made the rollout for the Saturday special—moderated by Weiss, its new editor in chief—a major priority, the one-hour town hall only averaged 1.9 million viewers. Overall, the Kirk event delivered an 11% dip in total viewership year-over-year, and slipped 41% in the key 25-54 demographic. Even if expectations were modest for a Saturday night in December, the results appeared underwhelming, especially after Weiss closed the broadcast by announcing her intentions to expand the network’s town hall and debate series into a regular feature.
But it wasn’t necessarily the ratings themselves that prompted irritation inside CBS, rather…
The rest of this story is for paid subscribers only.
Scoop-driven reporting and sharp-edged analysis. See why The Wall Street Journal declared Status a “must-read.”
The rest of this story is for paid subscribers only.
Already a subscriber? Sign in.
Scoop-driven reporting and sharp-edged analysis. See why The Wall Street Journal declared Status a “must-read.”
Brendan Carr speaks at a congressional oversight hearing. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
Carr Veers Off-Road: In a shocking moment on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr broke from precedent, declaring…
The remainder of this newsletter is for paid subscribers only.
Scoop-driven reporting and sharp-edged analysis. See why thousands of industry professionals rely on Status.
Already a subscriber? Sign in.
A subscription gets you full access to our nightly newsletter, which includes:
✅ Essential reporting on and analysis of the Fourth Estate, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the Information Wars, and more.
✅ Hand-curated links to the most consequential stories moving the needle in the key corridors of the industry.
✅ Unlimited access to our online archive where you can read previous editions of the newsletter.
