You have to admire “60 Minutes.” They just don’t care what Shari Redstone thinks about anything.
At the end of tonight’s show, Scott Pelley called out Redstone, Paramount for firing editor in chief — or at least forcing out — Bill Owens after 40 years with the company.
Pelley is right, of course. Redstone has been meddling in the coverage of Trump and Gaza to protect her merger with David Ellison’s Skydance. Ellison’s father, billionaire Larry, is in bed with Trump. It’s a nasty business.
Owens has always been Pelley’s producer. They are close friends. Obviously Pelley is upset. Like everyone at “60 Minutes,” the most important news show on the air, he’s nervous that all this tampering is going to bring bigger trouble.
I told you this week before anyone else that Owens’s successor will be Tanya Simon. A few weeks ago, CBS brought in ex-superstar producer Susan Zirinsky to oversee “60 Minutes” and the CBS Evening News. The latter, which hatched under Owens’ watch, is a disaster. CBS should admit it, pretend it was like Pam’s dream on “Dallas,” and put Norah O’Donnell back in charge.
Zirinsky certainly signed off on the note below. So, now what? The next one out, expert sources tell me, will be CBS News chief Wendy McMahon. And then there’s George Cheeks, co-CEO of Paramount Global, who allowed the Grammy Awards to leave the network after decades, and has made plenty of other bad decisions.
