CBS News lays off 6% of staff and shutters radio division, kickstarting a Bari Weiss-led overhaul
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — CBS News is shutting down CBS News Radio and laying off about 6% of its entire workforce, with executives explaining the cuts as a difficult but necessary reallocation of newsroom resources.
The news division currently has about 1,100 employees, so dozens will be departing as a result of Friday’s cutbacks.
It is the second round of layoffs at CBS News since David Ellison took control of Paramount last summer. And it represents the end of an era, since CBS News Radio has a 99-year history delivering up-to-the-minute headlines over the airwaves.
“CBS News Radio served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927,” CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski acknowledged in a memo to staff Friday morning.
However, they wrote, “a shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities, has made it impossible to continue the service.”
The radio unit will go off the air on May 22, which means its 700 affiliated stations have two months to come up with a replacement.
The radio unit closure and the wider layoffs come at a moment of intense change for CBS News, with more in store in the coming months.
Paramount is awaiting regulatory approval for its deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, including CNN, which may lead to a future combination of CNN and CBS News.
The possibility of Paramount owning CNN in the future did not factor into the planning for the current layoffs, however, sources at CBS said.
Regulatory approval for Paramount-WBD is thought to be six months away, at the earliest, and legally the companies must operate separately until then.
In the first of two Friday morning memos, Weiss and Cibrowski framed the cuts this way: “It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it. New audiences are burgeoning in new places, and we are pressing forward with ambitious plans to grow and invest so that we can be there for them.”
“That means some parts of our newsroom must get smaller to make room for the things we must build to remain competitive,” they wrote.
Weiss, a co-founder of The Free Press website, was personally installed by Ellison at the top of CBS News last October with a mandate to restore trust and regain audience.
The round of CBS News layoffs that same month, which hit almost every corner of the organization, largely predated her arrival.
But Friday’s cutbacks are more specifically a reflection of her vision.
After she arrived at CBS, Weiss was taken aback by both the obsolete nature of some operations and the depleted morale of some staffers, according to people who have spoken with her.
Weiss also perceived a stark resistance to change in some quarters of CBS. The staff overhaul stems, in part, from those observations.
“Employees who are affected will be notified by the end of the day,” Weiss and Cibrowski’s memo said. The note said “we’ll treat them all with care and respect” and acknowledged the “exceptionally intense” news cycle: “This organization is working its heart out to deliver for our audience. We’re so grateful to all of you, and we thank you for handling this difficult news with compassion.”
Their second memo, specifically about radio, noted that “the coming weeks will be difficult for the team members” since they’ll be keeping the radio network on the air until May while knowing their jobs are ending.
Weiss tried to figure out a way to save the radio network, according to a source familiar with the cuts, but “the financials made it impossible,” with barely any revenue coming in.
Further changes at CBS News are expected in the coming months, especially as talent contracts expire.
The-CNN-Wire
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