60 Minutes Is Dead. Bari Weiss Killed It.

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Hello everyone. 60 Minutes, America's most beloved news program. The 60 Minutes as you knew it is gone. Dead and buried, killed today by Barry Weiss. I'm JVL here with my bull work colleague Sam Stein to talk about it. Uh Sam, beginning this week, so 60 Minutes wrapped its season recently and we knew there were going to be big changes to the news organization. Uh we got word earlier in the week one of their senior producers, Sharon Alonsy, uh had been let go, had not had her contract renewed. And today we get word that Cecilia Vega, Tanya Simon, and Dragon Malovich were all fired as well. Of seven correspondents on 60 Minutes, three of them are gone. This is a wholesale reimagining. We have a new person in charge of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton. You may remember him from when he used to write a tech column for the New York Times like five minutes ago. Uh who has never produced a TV news show.

[00:00:58]He is now going to be running 60 Minutes, which means that Barry Weiss, who has never run a TV news show, is also going to be running 60 Minutes.

[00:01:07]Sam, I can't wait to hear what you think about this. Is Is this as bad as some alarmists out there think it might be?

[00:01:16]>> Well, depends on how you look at it. I think it's bad. Right. So let's just step back for a little bit. So uh Sharon was let go pretty much because she disagreed with Barry's editorial vision and it centered around that story. So she did Sharon Funy did a big CCOT story. Barry Weiss famously held it up.

[00:01:33]It spilled out into the public if you remember Canada 60 minutes ended up doing the original version and then it like >> So this was a this wasn't a hey let's you know we have a different vision. It was, hey, this is a real editorial clash and you are stepping on our product at behest of the Trump administration.

[00:01:50]That's Cheryl F's accusation to, you know, manufacture a different editorial bent. And I, that to me is a big effing deal, right? Like that's that is exactly the type of stuff that you're not supposed to have happen. And if you're the flagship news network, not just at CBS, the flagship news program for all of television news, what 60 minutes is >> and you see government half a century >> and you see government interference at that level, then you shouldn't treat this as anything other than a huge huge deal. Now the flip side of this is and here's where I I kind of go back to like the you know the stove touching elements that we talk about all the time which is cool. Let's see what happens. Let's just see how big a train wreck this becomes.

[00:02:34]Let's see the audience flee when they do this type of monkeying around. Let's see the stupid stuff that they put up on 60 Minutes that's manufactured to make Trump look decent and let's watch it all crumble. Like there's a part of me that's like, "Okay, we're just going to expedite the end of what we consider traditional TV journalism." And it's not going to come as a slow motion industrywide change of people getting away from TV news. it's going to come because there's been direct meddling and you'll know who the villain is.

[00:03:03]>> So, here's here's the problem with that because part of me uh does believe in markets sort of and says, "Uh, yeah, okay. Well, um Barry Weiss is running around screwing up all the products and the the market is speaking. CBS News is having all sorts of troubles since she came to town." The problem is that her tenure doesn't seem to be measured by market outcomes like everybody else has to chase like ratings and ad revenue and stuff. So the first her first project was CBS Evening News which she has remade in her own image. They are now in last place by an almost unimaginable number. They only just got back to 4 million total viewers a night. Um only just barely. They had like three and a half million viewers a night, >> which was something that people didn't think was possible for an evening newscast on a major network. They thought they thought that that's lowest low. Nobody could ever get down there. 4 million is as bad as it can ever be, right?

[00:04:00]>> This happened while ratings were going up at ABC and NBC News. So, it isn't just that, you know, that that CBS was trapped in the same cycle of downward trends as everybody else. And so anybody who wasn't Barry Weiss, who was being graded as an actual executive, there'd be like five alarm fires. And the the problem is that this the CBS News project is merely a loss leader for the Larry and David Ellison project, >> right?

[00:04:31]>> And so it seems like 60 Minutes is a cash cow. It's the most profitable part of CBS News. uh in 2024 I think they their ad revenue was $200 million season >> very very good right that could could get cut in half >> and it I don't think it would have any practical consequence because this isn't about the market and that's what freaks me out here because uh part of the critique of the contrarians the the people like Barry Weiss has been uh oh the the elite establishment is they're they're nervous about hearing dangerous ideas. They don't want to hear any dangerous ideas like we have and although you know they're holding back the the market if you put us in charge like you would see real America would flock to these things and you know we make real money.

[00:05:22]>> Isn't this great what you're about to say cuz it's going to expose the lie, right?

[00:05:27]>> But the lie, this is the thing. It doesn't matter now that the lie is exposed. They got the power, >> right?

[00:05:33]>> Because that's the thing, right? It was it was never about having to to perform once you're there. It was just about seizing the commanding heights.

[00:05:40]>> 100%. I will say, you know, one of the arguments for the Ellison's taking over and for Bay coming in as you are articulating here is that these are old institutions that are way out of step with modern media and we're going to reform them and make them real cash cows. You know, they were good. They they were holding on to some old ad revenue, but like they weren't really modern and they didn't really have their finger on the pulse of the nation and we're going to change that. And that clearly is going to be exposed as silly, right? Like and it will be very clear that this takeover was not about creating efficiencies or modernizing networks. It was about politics, which we always assumed and and obviously argued that it was. And so to to a degree, I'm sort of like good, let that be exposed. And it's it goes beyond CBS News which is not doing well and obviously 60 Mench which is now in an incredible transition period and we should talk a little about what we think is going to happen to it. Like Co Bear I mean the Coar Cob Bear like look say what you will about Co Bear his numbers were certainly better than the weird replacement show that they've put up which absolutely bombed on its first night. So if you have time and again their fingerprints on this new product it's underperforming. It does expose that lie. And I will just say this because you referenced it earlier how it would have set off in normal times five alarm fires. We know this. It wasn't that long ago that we had an example of this. Chris L CNN.

[00:07:03]>> Yeah.

[00:07:03]>> Okay. He came in. His idea was update the network, make it different, bring it into the modern age. And it didn't work.

[00:07:11]And it didn't take long for people to say, "Oh boy, we have to cut bait. Like this is not happening. We know it's not happening. And we're in trouble if we continue down this road." And all we've had we've had one small smidgen of a news story about how the the brass at CBS is not totally happy with how she's managing this evening news and they might take it away from her, but that was it. And that and that's it. And so yeah, like I think this exposes how how silly the rationale was for the takeover. But you are right. I will I'm not going to like argue with you. It is about the power and the power is not insignificant. Having those platforms really matters and they're just starting on them, right? We're not even in like the crux of the election season.

[00:07:52]>> So this this is the problem with corporateowned news media. And this is going to sound like an infomercial for the bull work, and I'm sorry, but just as an objective reality, it's the truth.

[00:08:03]>> Sure.

[00:08:03]>> When your news division is a tiny part of a giant corporation, then your news division's performance is ultimately irrelevant.

[00:08:13]And uh it is much more important that your news division not cause problems for the rest of the business. Now, none of that matters in normal times when Joe Biden is president. Nobody is worried that if the news division pisses off Joe Biden and uh the Biden administration that it's going to mean that the main corporate parent is going to get punished by the federal government or something like that. But we don't live in normal times. We live in an authoritarian context where Donald Trump picks winners and losers. we have a command economy. He imposes tariffs or doesn't impose tariffs. He tells people, "The Supreme Court says you can have your tariff money back, but if you ask for your tariff money back, I'm going to be very, very unhappy with you, and believe me, you'll pay." And so people just say, "Okay, well, we won't ask for our money back, right?" And so we live in a world in which all everybody in business knows that you have to be on the right side of Trump. And so becoming owned is now an enormous liability.

[00:09:09]So if you are a part of a business and your business does anything other than news then all of a sudden you're really vulnerable and >> listen Paramount has >> and Paramount is still trying to finalize its merger with Warner Brothers. It's inked but they still have to get it cleared and they're aiming for something like I don't know July or August. They're hoping that's a real expedited agreement on a merger of that magnitude. I mean it would be insane but it's probably going to happen. But that's like hanging like a sword over their head of the news division's head, right? They cannot and I and they know this because Trump's not making a secret of it. Nor is uh what's his face at the FCC? Brendan Carr. They are looking at this stuff by the segment. And so this is going to have obvious impacts on everything they do. And this is why the change at the 60 Minutes matters is because look, it's one thing to like fire an executive producer, which is bad. But, you know, if you promote from within, you at least have some of that institutional memory and that sort of pride over what you're putting out there. If you're bringing in someone from the outside, whether or not he he has television experience, they're coming in with pretty clear directives.

[00:10:17]They could be explicit or implicit, which is don't [ __ ] up the [ __ ] merger. Sorry for swearing, but like that's it. like don't do anything to screw up this merger.

[00:10:26]>> And so for the next I Yeah. Go ahead.

[00:10:28]>> Yeah. No, also another point is again just anybody this is like management 101. Anybody who's been around a little bit the way you and I have knows this.

[00:10:35]Uh the reason the only reason to hire somebody who doesn't know what they're doing in a new job is that you can control that person and they will be utterly reliant on their big boss for for direction. Right? This is if they had gone and hired somebody who was an industry veteran who like had strong understandings of how to do the work and all that stuff, >> then it's a little harder to push them around, right? Because because they can say, "No, I've done this before. I know what to do."

[00:11:01]>> You hire in the former New York Times tech reporter who like did a Netflix documentary and I'm sorry, he just isn't going to have the standing to to say to the corporate bosses, uh, no, no, I won't do that. It's even worse than that because he's going to be pinched really badly, right? So, he's going to have pressure from above saying this is how it's got to go. And then there are still four reporters there who are going to want to do I mean Leslie Stall and Scott Py and Bill Whitaker are not going to be like okay you know I'll do this like fluffy piece on you know how great Trump is and all this they're how Pete Hex's really changing the Pentagon in profound ways. They are going to be adamant that their reputations at this stage of the career, none of them are younger than 65 years old. They're not going to be like, "Okay, I'll go along with you." It's going to be I think this is the start, not the beginning of a huge remake. And it's going to be very interesting to see who they get to replace, if anyone, Cecilia Vega and Sharon Alfonsa. I mean, are we talking about like free press folks coming on board and being like, you know, woke? We're going to do our 15th segment on woke campus culture and how it's killing America. Like, is that more on the mood?

[00:12:11]>> Another segment on mom Donnie.

[00:12:12]>> Mom. Yeah, we got to do mom dying again.

[00:12:14]We got to do mom donny again. I mean, that is that what we have in store for us for 60 minutes? I I just don't see how this is Well, we'll see. I You know, you're right. Like, I've done this thing where I've gone into new institutions and had to try to manage different cultures. It's hard. It's really hard and it's really hard to see how this works at 60 minutes.

[00:12:34]>> So, I uh I just want to say a little bit about the dangerous ideas stuff. One of the most egregious things that Barry Weiss has done was she stepped in and inserted herself in 60 minutes as attempts to get Benjamin Netanyahu to sit for an interview. So, Leslie Stall, veteran correspondent, had been working on this for uh some time. And Barry Weiss, by the accounts we have of this, inserted herself and reached out to Netanyahu and said, "Well, what about Major Garrett? Would you would you prefer to sit down with Major Garrett?"

[00:13:10]>> The idea that you would come in to let an interview subject off the hook by then letting them pick their interlocular.

[00:13:20]>> Yeah.

[00:13:21]>> Is the craziest [ __ ] thing I've ever heard in all of journalism. No, you've basically completely inverted the power vacuum here, right? It's like suddenly he gets to choose. Yeah.

[00:13:31]>> Yeah. And uh I just, you know, again, Barry Weiss has made her entire career out of talking about the things that people aren't allowed to say and blah blah blah. And she comes to 60 Minutes and she has only one side of one story that she wants to tell and she is truckling up to power and featuring Pete Hex. They they went and threw an honorary dinner for Donald Trump before the White House Correspondent Center. I mean, I I don't know how anybody who is a newsman or newswoman could sit at a dinner being thrown in the honor of a person you're supposed to cover. That's insane.

[00:14:11]It's insane, Sam.

[00:14:13]>> It's nutty. Um, but it gets to the original point which is if you're not thinking about this in the vein of this is, you know, a commitment to the idea of hard-hitting news or if you're not even think about it in the idea of we need to have a expansive market where we're recording people who are not just MAGA but also care about holding power accountable. If you don't think about in those veins and you're just thinking about it through the lens of can I make my corporate overlords happy with me, then you do stuff like this and we'll see how long it lasts. But, you know, the Elson's have unfathomable amount of money. They don't really care what's going on here, right? Like >> essentially infinite money, >> right? Like they don't care. And you know, there's a version of this happening at the post too with Bezos where he just doesn't care. He can write off the whatever the hell happens with the post because he's going to make it back and folds with contract. So, we're in a bad place, which is why you should subscribe to the bull work.

[00:15:04]>> So, this is this is what I was going to say. This one again, it sounds like an infomercial, but you know, my god, it's just so true. Um, we're not a corporate media. Like, this is all we do. This is it. We do news and we do it here on YouTube. We do it on Substack. We do it on the internet. We come to people in their inboxes with newsletters. We have new articles and new reporting up every day. We do a ton of different shows and takes. And, uh, we live and die with our readers and our listeners. And, uh, we respond to them. That's who we answer to. And uh if you want to fight for independent media, come subscribe to Bullwork Plus.

[00:15:45]Sam, thanks for sitting down with me, buddy. I appreciate it. Everybody else, good luck, America.