The loss of Stephen Colbert on May the 21st, and now with Scott Pelley’s firing on June 2, amongst the loss of all the other talent at 60 Minutes (still in the Top Ten 18 – 49 bracket, up 9% this year alone and just announced today), let’s face it: CBS is trying to move us into the local Family Dollar Store, one they believe will shore up the near abandoned strip mall on the outskirts of town. Before the streamers take over…
Once, turning on CBS was like being welcomed into a Michelin star restaurant with an open bar in the grand hotel on the town square - every night.
Now we’re being told we’re lucky to get served up whatever the cool kids under 40 think is “what we outta know according to them.” When they snark at all Boomers/Gen X over 60 for enjoying their “long” stories, they claim they’re the smart ones “watching the ice cube melt.” Of what? Time well spent, as we please? Or the melting of common human values, wisdom, storytelling and entertainment, iterated over decades of human engagement into a sludge of AI slop?
Once – in a galaxy long, long ago – there was the story of when Johnny Carson (who regularly drew in – what? – 49 million views a night) was apparently unhappy with how NBC was treating him. So Johnny went to Lew Wasserman, President and Chairman of MCA (Universal), the undisputed eminence gris of Hollywood, post-World War II, who created the new era of licensing and back-end agreements, first for Jimmy Stewart, then for the dawn of television. Carson wanted to move to another channel, worried he was leaving “money on the table,” thinking he could surely get far better deal terms at CBS or ABC. Wasserman paused. Then, he carefully warned Johnny to respect the loyalty and the power of the audience. “The audience never wants to change the dial.” Once they have chosen NBC, they would be very reluctant to choose Johnny on another channel. So, Johnny stayed at NBC for 30 years and left on top.
The thinking was, then, that if the audience chose NBC to view Johnny Carson, they would also probably choose NBC over the other channels for a lot of their other programming – which certainly kept NBC on top for decades.
Okay, we’re now in a different era – with streaming and YouTube. Tell that to the NFL, MLB, ESPN, NCAA, NBA and UFC who now barter off dates within the final game series just for top dollar. Yes, many Boomers, even Gen Z, now scramble to keep up. Imagine now how Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton, the newly appointed Executive Producer 60 Minutes, snicker at the hapless, antiquated oldsters.
Once upon a time, the audience’s desire for top-of-the-game, undisputed quality ran the entire competitive viewing marketplace. Yes, the audience has varying taste which don’t have to mutually like – from afternoon soap operas, to police procedurals, linear three-camera shows like All in the Family or Friends, American Idol or The Voice, or Survivor, or The Amazing Race, or SNL. But overall, the audience is smart. They know what they like and they are loyal. They want excellent production values; they perceive the long game of producing and talent development. They seek a great story well told, wait up late for a great comedic analysis of the day expertly presented, tune into a journalist’s 12-minute report story that took months/years to gain access. They appreciate there are legions of staff supporting the enterprise. They respect the years of integrity in gaining entrée to the Big Leagues – be that journalism, entertainment, sports.
Too often now, my students lament why do movies have to be 90 – 120 minutes? Can’t they just be, like, 3 – 5 minutes, or “verticals” that last maybe last the length of a goldfish’s memory?
To which I always reply: do you want to watch your children play soccer or baseball, or do you want to watch a world class game? Do you respect the years of systemic iteration it takes to bring a Shohei Ohtani to the Los Angeles Dodgers or LeBron James to the NBA or Novak Djokovic to Wimbledon? Or do you want to watch your kids do bellyflops off the high-dive? Do you want to continue to put your children’s artwork up on the refrigerator or see them publish a book, or their work hung in a museum?
Now we are witnessing the era of Goldfish Memory Arrogance: CBS has forgotten, if it ever even knew - and certainly the FCC has forgotten and the Ellisons and Trump apparently have never understood - that the entire point of broadcast is to expand the true sense of being the United States. From 1920s on, when radio first began, broadcasting discovered it was generating a far greater power than just friendly noise in the dark night. Radio broadcasts connected all the small towns and remote hamlets and thereby, radio created our first truly national community culturally, spiritually and emotionally. Out of many we became one – in humor, insight, shared values that carried us through World War II. Suddenly, our cultural icons became our neighbors. Daily, everyone could be a part of the same conversation. People from New York City to Memphis to Los Angeles could hear each other’s accents and appreciate each other as, well, neighbors. When radio began, everyone across America was delighted to hear Will Rogers’ “aw shucks, down home” musings – the Oklahoma cowboy with his wild cow-roping talent. But he also made fun of Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Hoover to their faces. He called out the plight of the Great Depression’s cataclysmic impact on millions of men looking for work, the soup lines. He flew over the Dust Bowl, reporting the misery of bankruptcy, speaking of how farmers were forced to pile their families onto jalopies and wend their “Grapes of Wrath” journeys west, while the photographer with him posted photos of Rogers in newspapers across the land. Rogers was the Jon Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, rolled into one, of his day.
We heard Louis B. Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, unite the nation in music and laughter. That became the entire rallying, unifying point – family entertainment — creating a community of common values. By 1931, every home had a radio. Sure, the FCC became concerned about bad language, bawdy behavior and bias. But far more importantly, now decades late, shows like 60 Minutes, Stephen Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon, the Daily Show, SNL all continue to serve as a central nerve system, the very heart center, of how we each end our day – every week. They create community, with laughter and uplift and elan. And inform us with integrity. They generate compassion and goodwill. They keep our hearts and minds open, and facile.
Colbert embodied the best of front porch society. That familiar place, like the neighborhood pub, where we could drop in anytime only to encounter that neighbor who too had just dropped by to visit. We would be so excited to see that they had made good. We spent time with our favorite aging rockstar who had been the very soundtrack of our love affairs, our coming-of-age. Like Paul McCartney, Paul Simon or Elvis Costello, or meet that new up-and-comer, Hozier or Jack White; or, be delighted to see that local kid who made good and remembered to come back, like Jon Baptiste. We could sit around in our most comfortable clothes, in an expansive, beautiful place, and be amazed by such brilliant minds as Brian Cox or Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Or spend time with a noted novelist like George Saunders or listen in awe to great directors like Christopher Nolan or Steven Spielberg. And maybe a movie star would stop by, like Meryl Streep or Tom Hanks. Or Keanu Reeves would offer up a profound insight. And we’d meet the latest TV star, or an astronaut or NBA player. Every night.
And, occasionally, we might just experience greatness, such as when Sir Ian McKellan‘s – Gandalf himself - suddenly stepped out onto center stage at The Late Show and graced us with an extraordinary monologue about “embracing the stranger.” “For whom among us has not been a stranger?” We could go to bed with that thought. This from a world-class actor reciting a lost 500-year-old Shakespeare text.
And now, must we also lose the great leaders of journalistic integrity? Scott Pelley, and the entire 60 Minutes team? These people who have dedicated their own lives to asking the hard questions. Who have put themselves in dangerous places to take us to places we would otherwise never get to go? What does go on in the Cecot Prison? Where are US neighbors being sent? Why shouldn’t we see that story? What are the conditions in Gaza? Who’s view, indeed, should we believe? How are the citizens of Ukraine surviving in a war they did not choose? How can women get pregnant today with IVF? Or what about the humanity it takes for these experienced scuba divers to risk their lives to save young Thai men lost in a flooding cave? And what about the good time interviews with an aging Muhammed Ali, or the fun of meeting Alison Liu, the Olympic Gold-winning ice skater who soared into our hearts like a comet in January in Milano.
This is, or was, or has been goodwill. Presented to us courtesy of CBS’s excellent news gathering.
But this “goodwill” is a two-way street. If there were a way to document every time we chose CBS, out of loyalty and attachment, over any other station or streamer, there would be more than enough money to pay for their purported annual $40 million losses over Colbert, and their apparent need to anticipate future losses for fear that 60 Minutes is a melting ice-cube.
CBS was once the Tiffany network. Once it was that irreplaceable lamp shining in the night, but now it’s being smashed into pieces. Why should any of us care about what happens to them? The new owners of CBS proclaim they are off setting their fear of the “melting ice cube” of future attention spans, by offering us curated, “Family Dollar store experiences” now. They’ll decide exactly what information helps us decide what is true. As only they know for sure. They know what will soothe us each day. Especially anyone over 40.
Soon enough, they will discover the vast US audience’s true power. We won’t chase them. Soon enough, they’ll be looking to service their ever-growing debt and wondering where their audience went. CBS, the Ellisons, and the Trump FCC don’t even know what their true purpose is:
Broadcast news, expert entertainment inspires, informs, uplifts, and broadens horizons everyday. CBS’s sole mandate is to elevate those individuals who have achieved excellence in becoming the best in their field, to iterate what the audience’s innate intelligence already discerns; to unite the nation with goodwill, with great conversation, art and music, and laughter, every night. And to respect that we, the audience, inherently know a good story well told.
They need to remember that we have taste. Our time is ours. We value real life.
Before their lights go out. And their ice melts.
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