This week, we witnessed the sudden implosion of “60 Minutes” after Bari Weiss fired veteran correspondent Scott Pelley for questioning her decision to take a sledgehammer to one of the most storied and successful news brands in American television history.

Pelley’s firing, carried out by Weiss’ new show boss Nick Bilton, not only threw one of television’s most revered institutions into crisis, ending Pelley’s decades-long tenure at the program he helped define, but also imperiled Weiss herself, exposing her chaotic style and lack of talent management experience.

For a moment, it appeared entirely possible that "60 Minutes" could suffer an existential collapse. Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim—the program's only remaining correspondents—were openly weighing whether to stay. Had they walked, Weiss would have been left presiding over the ruins of a once mighty journalistic institution that had endured for generations. Instead, she dodged a bullet.

On Friday, Stahl, Whitaker, and Wertheim informed colleagues they would remain with the program, averting complete disaster for "60 Minutes" and offering Weiss a temporary reprieve. But it would be a mistake to view their decision as a vote of confidence in her leadership, which they not-so-subtly compared to a “dictatorship.”

In fact, the 42-year-old CBS News boss has badly fumbled a situation that now threatens not only "60 Minutes" but the CBS brand itself. As Status reported Thursday, anger inside the network has reached extraordinary levels. CBS Entertainment chief Amy Reisenbach has privately told associates that creatives in Hollywood have expressed disdain over Weiss’ efforts to remake the network. And other senior leaders inside David Ellison’s Paramount share the view that Weiss is damaging the company brand, with some saying she should be tossed overboard before even more damage is done.

While Paramount continues to circle the wagons around Weiss, insisting that Ellison remains confident in her leadership, the damage done this week suggests she may follow the path of other high-profile media executives with little management experience appointed with a mandate to remake their institutions, only to be cast aside after the disasters they unleashed became too big to ignore.

David Zaslav backed Chris Licht for more than a year, despite the tumult he stirred inside CNN—until 13 months in, the chaos engulfing the network became too much and Zaslav pulled the plug. Meanwhile, at The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos supported his widely disliked publisher Will Lewis for more than two years—until finally the bedlam at the newspaper grew so far out of control, Bezos too had to cast him out of K Street.

After Weiss’ embarrassing moves at CBS News—implementing dramatic changes that have alienated audiences, mishandling its highest-profile talent, and greatly damaging the credibility of “60 Minutes”—she now faces that same prospect as Ellison is forced to reckon with her mess.

In a clear sign that the Paramount boss is reconsidering her ability, The Financial Times reported this week that Paramount executives and advisers are increasingly open to keeping CNN chief Mark Thompson in a senior role if the company’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery is given a green light. According to the report, some view Thompson as a potential stabilizing force, a role he has successfully played at the cable network in the wake of Licht’s turbulent tenure.

Ellison tapped the anti-woke, pro-Israel founder of The Free Press in part to signal that the company was willing to pursue a cozier relationship with Donald Trump after his years of attacks and grievances over CBS News’ coverage. Should Ellison secure approval for the WBD acquisition, there would be little reason to keep Weiss in place after a year defined by havoc and backlash at CBS News. Her usefulness to Paramount—as a sign to Trump and his administration of a friendlier posture toward MAGA in order to ease regulatory scrutiny—would already be exhausted.

And the political environment that helped elevate Weiss is also quickly changing. As Democrats appear poised to regain power in Washington, her appointment is increasingly at risk of becoming a liability for Paramount rather than an asset. The question now is, how long will Ellison wait to act?