This is CBS! (On The Brink)

So in the mid ninety nineties, they hired someone who seemingly could guess programming trends before they even happened, to revitalize the station, and that someone would send CBS, at least for a good while, over the brink and bang zoom to the moon. This is CBS on the brink. I always wanted to say that, Ariel, that's nice. Yeah, Hi,

I'm Jonathan and I'm Ariel. And in case you didn't get the bank Zoom, that's from the Honeymooners, which premiered on CBS and along with their prestigious television shows like Big Bang Theory and Murphy Brown and Murphy Brown. And we're going to talk about TVs and stuff. But before we jump into that, we're in a different age than we were. When I was growing up, there were only the three broadcast stations, and then there were some local channels.

You used your little Bunny Ears to watch them. Yeah, and also my antenna sometimes, but I would try and tune into that kind of stuff. I did get cable, Like cable existed when I was a little kid, It's just my family didn't have it. Until maybe I was seven or eight. We got cable that opened up a bunch of more channels, but you still had the three big broadcast stations. It wouldn't be for many years after word that we would say that there are four broadcast stations. Right.

But today is very different than when I was growing up, So keeping in mind that today is a very different landscape, I'm curious, how do you watch television or do you watch TV? Well? I do enjoy television. I am a self proclaimed giant geek, and so I like watching all of the geeky things that come out and then not geeky things. I watched antenna type television growing up and occasionally cable. I have cable now actually because I like

watching the shows when they come out without spoilers. And sometimes there are channels that I just can't get on Hulu or Netflix, or shows that I can't watch in arrears, so I do have cable. I also like watching the occasional football or hockey game, and that's easier on cable. But I also have Netflix and Amazon and probably the Disney Service, and I have Cable. I can't tell you the last time I watched it. I honestly don't remember

the last time I turned on cable TV. I have it because it's bundled, and so I tend to watch things online. And honestly, these days, I don't watch that much television programming at all. I'm watching a lot of like independent YouTube type video stuff, um, like highly produced YouTube stuff. It's not like I'm watching some guy throw darts at balloons for minutes. But I'll watch Twitch for a while. Yeah, I do watch some Twitch programming as well.

So it's a very different world. But CBS obviously is steeped in the traditional forms of media, although they've obviously also expanded beyond that. So we're gonna give a quick overview of CBS origins because I find them fascinating to do too. Let's let's set our minds back, all right, just before I'm going to go through this as fast as I can. But I'm also really a geek out

about this. Before World War One, you had radio, just starting to get started in the United States, like you started to have radio broadcast stations just barely begin just before World War One. World War one starts to break out, and the United States government kind of flips its lid because a lot of the companies that we're running those radio broadcast stations, which were mostly for the use of sending telegrams wirelessly, a lot of them were owned by

overseas companies, companies in Europe. Interesting, and the government is saying, huh, don't really want this foreign owned company to have such an important role in our communications infrastructures. So what we're gonna do is sees all the companies, and they did. World War One ends and they said, well, now we've got all these radio broadcast towers that we can't use anymore.

We need to get rid of them. So the government turns to a group of companies, including General Electric being the largest of them, to create a new corporation, the Radio Corporation of America, better known as r c A. R c a's job is to oversee all these radio stations, which gradually evolve into broadcast radio as we would think of it today. All right, So it becomes broadcast radio and our c A as part of this, decides to create its own subsidiary to oversee this, the National Broadcast

Company or in BC. It's important to remember the NBC plays an integral role in the formation of CBS because along comes a talent agent. He's got a heck of an act to show you, I can't this podcast. So this guy named Arthur Judson is pitching his clients to NBC and he's getting nowhere. So what do you do when you can't get your clients booked on the radio station? You cry in a corner. No, you make a new radio station. In fact, you make a new chain of

radio stations. In fact, you get your own radio network. And that's what he did. He started to go out and try and form his own radio network. Uh. It started off as the United Independent Broadcasters, but not too long after he founded that. In ninety seven, he agreed to a merger with Columbia Phonograph and Records Company and this would become CBS. This happened in nineteen It became known as the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Company and the company struggled.

It was it was up against a behemoth because NBC had this bigger company, our c A and behind that General Electric. Right, so NBC has this huge safety net behind it. CBS doesn't. It's independent, it's struggling. So then this wealthy guy named william S. Paley comes in, um and he says, you know what, I think I can do something with this this broadcast company. And his father had been a very successful businessman, you could say it

was something of a lifesaver. And he comes in and he buys this struggling company, calls it the Columbia Broadcasting System or CBS proper so much better than CPBC. Yeah, and this was the formation of CBS. But at the time we have to remember CBS was a radio network. Television comes later, and NBC was too, exactly, and so then we get into another big change, a big difference between CBS and NBC. The guy who was overseeing NBC thought that advertising was gosh. He didn't like it. That

was foolish of him. Yeah, he actually there were famous stories that he would refuse to meet with advertising executives. He would let his his direct reports handle that for him because he hated it. Hailey was the opposite, and he was like, I'm gonna wine and dine these guys so that they advertise on my shows. In fact, I'm going to convince them to sponsor entire shows and we will feature their products either in every advertising break or

we'll incorporate them directly into the scripts. You know, Wow, you sure do look nice wearing that dapper dan hair hair wellmade? Yeah, which is that you should write commercials? John? Yeah, not not my strong suit, I admit it. I bet that made NBC pretty mad though. Yeah, they got into a fierce rivalry, and that wouldn't be the only thing that CBS would do that would make NBC mad. But there also was an interesting side note to this, which just very quickly, is that CBS and NBC were the

dominant players in radio. There was no one else, to the point where another organization called the Mutual Broadcasting System filed a complaint with the f c C, the Federal Communications Commission in the United States, and said, this is a do woppoli. These two companies control everything. That's not acceptable. So FCC says, you know what, you're right, NBC, you guys split into two. Now, NBC already had two networks,

both called NBC. So they said, well, all right, we'll sell off one of these and we'll keep the other one, and the one they sold off would eventually become the American Broadcast Company or ABC. So now you get all three of the big broadcast companies, and you could argue that all three, either directly or indirectly came out of our c A and just get excited about No, that's

very exciting, it's very very interesting. As you said, advertising isn't the only thing that caused a sore spot between NBC and CBS because CBS stole a bunch of talent away from NBC. Yeah, they did a whole head hunting thing. Paley led the charge, and they offered NBC stars deal they couldn't refuse. They gave them such lucrative contracts that multiple NBC stars jumped ship. And this was right around the same time that the industry was starting to embrace television.

So they got icons like Jack Benny and George Burns to come over to CBS. Really good timing on their part, yep, and uh, the rivalry between the two companies went beyond that. Again, I'm not going to dwell too much on there, but you had our c A and in BC backing certain types of media, whereas CBS and Columbia Records were backing

other types of media. You had CBS put forward it's standard for color television and it got accepted as the FCC standard, while our c A was saying, not so fast, our versions better, and the FCC said, you know what, you're right, We're gonna reverse our decision. So this was a battle going back and forth in those early days, but both companies were largely thriving off that competition. The Again, the interesting part being that CBS was doing this as

an independent company. It wasn't, it wasn't under the umbrella of a larger corporation. But you know, they had trouble making their TVs around the time of the Korean War and just gave up on it and focused on television. Yeah, because their television. And I won't go into the details of this either, but it was a electro mechanical color TV, meaning that there were actually moving parts inside your television to make the color work, like little elves On treadmill, well,

like a color wheel. But yes, it was powered by el Son tre and mills. Same thing. Well. In nineteen fifty one, as a part of focusing more on television. They come up with their CBS I logo. I like that you said, by focusing more on television, I meant to do that. Yes, I did. And then we're not going to focus on the year by year because things go pretty well for television. We're just gonna hit a few key points. Yeah, and and kind of highlight how

the transition was happening. Yeah, between the years of nineteen sixty and nineteen sixty two, CBS stopped offering radio serials and dramas. Yeah, they were. They were just moving away from the audio drama format, which Ariel and I both love. Yes, we have been involved with audio drama before, and we we would love to Podcasting is allowed that to come back. But this was the era where people were saying, let's move those stories over to television. Let's tell these stories

in a different format. And in ninety eight we got sixty minutes. We get sixty minutes every hour the television show, right right right, the news show. You know, I knew that you did. By nineteen sixty nine, did you know that CBS had employees and was making over sixty four million dollars? I did not did not know that part. And in the next decade. In the nineteen seventies, Uh, we started seeing CBS debut shows that would end up

becoming iconic. All in the Family is often thought of as one of the best sitcoms, you know, one of the best examples of the sitcom format. Ever, it broke barriers of what was acceptable and not acceptable on television. That could be a whole article in and of itself. Sure, Mash, another phenomenal series, came out in the nineteen seventies. This is obviously it's also when I was growing up, so I have a lot of fond memories of this stuff.

It's a little before my time, but I really enjoyed Mash and the Waltons, which were the focus of a gag I wrote for the video series that we used to do large neer drunkle later because we talked about Battle beyond the Stars. Yeah, yeah, anyway, that's neither here, no good memories. In nineteen seventy four, the company was known as CBS Incorporated. And in sony six they start seeing a troubling thing on the horizon, because that was

right when the cable industry started taking off. Cable originally, by the way, was just meant to bring television signals to people who were having trouble picking them up because they were living in either remote areas or they were living in dense cities where buildings were blocking television frequencies. So it wasn't originally meant to deliver eight billion channels with nothing on them, but rather to just allow people to get those television feeds that they couldn't get over

the air well. And this is part of what got CBS in trouble because they didn't view cable as a competitor and so they didn't prepare to compete with it. In eight three, CBS joints with Columbia Pictures in HBO and they make TriStar Pictures. But then CBS cells its shares to Sony two years later. Yeah, it wouldn't stick with that particular approach. And then we get a dramatic story in Ariel. I want you to take this part

because you researched this part and you wrote this. I want to hear exactly what was going on here because this is the first part where we actually see internal conflict. Yes, So in Lawrence known as Larry Tish and his brother Robert Bob Tish step in and save CBS from a takeover. So TBS was trying to buy CBS. New York Times called it a takeover of corporate waters and conservative politicians. And this is interesting to me because of you know, you look at TBS, that's one of those channels that

became famous for flourishing in the cable era. Like that with Cable is what gave TBS. It's incredible boost. And so like you were saying, we're CBS, Hatton really viewed Cable as a competitor and now it's directly threatening the company. We had Turner behind Ted Turner behind it. Yeah, and we here in Atlanta have a lot of stories about Mr Ted Turner. Yes, So Larry and Bob use a company day own blows to buy a minority stake in CBS.

They purchased of the outstanding stock of CBS for nine dollars, so just shy of a billion, and this stops TBS from being able to take over. Yeah. And also Larry is invited to join the board of directors on CBS and then would later end up being named its chief executive officer. Yes. Sadly, during his time as CEO, he sold off the record division of CBS and the publishing side and had to institute a bunch of cutbacks and

cost saving measures. Now, the records in the publishing side were still the core business of CBS at that time, so they were focusing on TV, but they still yeah, the revenue generators were there parts of the business that they divested themselves of. And it was also that you could remove those concerns while concentering on the television. But a lot of people question that move if they said, they said, if those parts of the business were the parts that are making money, why were those the parts

that you sold off? Yeah? Yeah, it kind of gave him a bad rap. It did, however, allow CBS to focus mainly on television programming. Yeah, but that was not something that would immediately help the company. No. In fact, CBS started seeing losses because of these changes. We'll talk about how they address those losses in just a moment, but first let's take a quick break. Alright, Ariel, let's set the scene. It's okay, we've got cable that's still

very much an issue. It's a growing issue. Yeah, it's grown from around seven channels to thirty three, and now you're looking at a point where the cable channels are starting to become a credible threat to the long established broadcast company. Yeah. By cable channels were making revenues just

a billion dollars under the Big three. Yeah. So if you look at the Big three and then you look at the cable channels, now, grant you're looking collectively and collectively, but still you're starting to say, these these broadcast companies up. For the longest time, we thought of as unassailable, like they had been around for so long. It was kind of like that too big to fail mentality. And now suddenly the writing appears to be different. On the wall.

It doesn't sound like it's too big to fail. Now it sounds like you better pay attention to this. Well. Part of what allowed cable channels to net almost as much money as the Big three is the fact that on top of getting ad money, that the broadcasting companies also were doing. Yes, they were getting subscription money, yeah, which the broadcast companies weren't doing at least at least

not for another year. Yeah, but two CBS at least had one crowning achievement it could point to that was insignificant. They were the number one broadcast company in the United States. They were the first network to rise to first place in just one season. Yeah, which is pretty impressive, like being able to go uh and and claim that spot and not have it be like a super long trend to get there. Yeah. So then in ninety two the

Cable Act past. This was a big deal. It was because it allowed local networks to charge carriers like Comcast for t Spectrum a retransmission fee to air their broadcasts. So this allowed local news to reach cable subscribers and things like that. But the Big Three saw this and started also requesting retransmission fees and fees from those local networks that were subsidiaries and and syndicating the Big Three programming.

This ended up creating a real conflict in the television industry, and it was an expensive one actually would go all the way through the nineties and into the two thousand's and up to two thousand thirteen. Really for the next part of this particular story, we're gonna get back into the nineties in a second, But it was when CBS and Showtime stopped airing two specific key markets that time Warner Cable was servicing because they were having this fundamental

disagreement of what the retransmission fees should be. CBS wanted their retransmission fees bumped up make more money, and time warners saying, I can't we if we do that for you, we have to do it for everybody when their contracts are And if we do it for everybody, then in order for us to make a profit, we have to increase the cost to the subscriber, and this customer will stop subscribing. Yeah, and you'll see a lot of cord cutters. And keep in mind that by two thousand thirteen, you're

starting to see the early trends of cord cutting already. Yeah. At that time, reach transmission fees were already about three billion dollars. So it's a pretty big number to start with, and then to raise that is a lot. Yeah. And on top of that, you can say that this might have been an anticipation for that cord cutting trend, the idea that the Internet was now the new threat. Where cable had been the threat in the seventies and eighties,

now it was the Internet and streaming services. Yeah. Well, back to let's jump back to their CBS gets a big blow. They lose the NFL I guess they were no longer ready for some football. Fox took it over. At this time, Fox became the fourth network, so it was the Big four, which I remember how weird that was to me when it was happening, because throughout my childhood there are only three networks, and then you have Fox that officially becomes a network. And in large part

it was when the NFL came over to Fox. There were certain things that really helped establish Fox, the Simpsons being one of them, but NFL certainly went a long way. Well, the NFL, I think is part of what was keeping CBS is younger viewership watching that channel, because outside of that, they had programs like Sixty Minutes and Murphy Brown and Murder she wrote, and Dr Quinn Medicine Women. Mind you. I love all those shows, Yes, but you're secretly fifty

years old and secretly fifty years old. This was when CBS was starting to gain that reputation that this is the network that old people watch. Like that was that was just generally what people felt. Yeah, but I mean the thing is advertisers key advertising ranges twenties to fifties, so you get over fifty and advertisers just aren't targeting them as much, right, Yeah, you're typically like the sweet

spuzz like eighteen to thirty four. That's where you really are concentrating your advertising money typically, So when you start thinking that a channel's demographics or networks demographics are beyond that, you're far less likely to spend advertising money. So this was a perception problem that CBS really needed to address. It's very similar to another story that we covered not

too long ago on the Brink. Yeah, old spice, Yeah, you don't want to be the You don't want to be the cologne that you're or the smell that your grandfather smells like. And you don't want to be the channel that your grandfather watches. I guess I mean unless you're me aerial secret fifty year old. Yeah, not that fifty years old by any means in my mind, But this was this was the perception. Yes, we're not judging,

I'm closer to fifty than I am to thirty. So uh, Now, all of this, the drop of viewership from the NFL, the lack of younger viewers, meant that CBS needed to provide advertising spots to advertisers at less costs. Yeah, they couldn't afford or they couldn't command higher prices, so they had to start cutting how much they could ask for these advertising deals, which of course hurts the bottom line.

So what do they do. Well, first, they had a couple of shows, The Nanny and Chicago Hope, Yeah, which I enjoyed. So they're still catering to the secret fifty year old. Hey, let's say Nanny is a solid forty two all right, Well, the story continues to go poorly for CBS because they actually fall to last place among the three major networks. Yeah, yeah, despite Fox being the fourth, it's still kind of not counting. Yeah, there they were. Fox kind of had this nebulous sort of descriptor as

being a broadcast network. But keep in mind ninety two was when CBS had been on top, and now we're talking to ninety four and now they're in last place. Yeah, and and at this time Fox was starting to buy affiliates, so they're they're rampant sucking up. Yeah. CBS did make a profit that year despite being last place in the Big three, two one point six million dollars, but that

that profit was not growth. That was actually they weren't profiting by as much as they had the previous year, right, because the year before they had made more than three hundred million. Yeah, well, by they were down another so by they only had one prime time night that was top in the seven nights, and that would be Saturday, when old people are staying home and everyone else knows

it's all right for fighting. Yes, because of CBS's drop. However, Westinghouse Electric Corporation put out a bid to buy CBS in August of and CBS that'd sure, Yeah, this was a huge, huge shift because now you finally have this true independent or more or less true independent company that's becoming folded under another company. So CBS for so long had been standing on its own and now agrees to this acquisition. And it was for the princely sum of

five point for billion dollars, which is pretty good. It's even better considering that's about eighty one dollar per cash share of stock, which the previous year stocks had gone as low as fifty dollars a year. So it was so at least for shareholders, that didn't look awful, right, because it looks like they're they're selling at a price that they might not otherwise see if CBS were to stand on its own, and it was an exceptionally big deal because CBS was, in theory, the last independent TV

network by that time. So Westinghouse goes through this and the company itself already had a strong reputation. It was a broadcast pioneer. But while they had been in broadcast in the early days, in fact Westinghouse was one of the entities that was important in the formation of the networks, at this point that really wasn't their business anymore. They had moved away from that. They had gone into manufactring really,

so broadcast was a tiny part of their empire. However, even though it was a tiny part of the empire, it was still important because it was the most profitable part of their empire. Fun fact about this Westinghouse buyout is that the announcement came one day after Disney announced its merger with ABC. So that's how I was able to be the last independent by day. It was interesting because you have tishe they're saying that this was this

was a win. Mark. This is a win because the investors who had put their money into the company saw a return on that investment. But CBS was not immediately like repaired, like the damage that had been done the losing its way. It wasn't like immediately put on the right course now, although Westinghouse seemed to be really committed to pushing CBS as a network because they started selling off all of their manufacturing and production side of their

business to focus on the television. Yeah, kind of reminds me of the story we just said about CBS when when they made the move to sell off the production and music sides. But in this case, the television side was the most profitable part of westing else so that is the fundamental difference there. So in n CBS is looking to improve their programming. So who do they turn to? They turned to a gentleman named Leslie moon Vos. Yeah, this would be someone who becomes incredibly important in CBS.

It's also a very problematic person to talk about, and we'll get into why. But chances are if you've heard the name, you understand where we're going already. However, let's talk about what moonvest was doing upon joining CBS. Well, he's working at the w B and he had also helped recently develop E R and Friends for NBC, which were huge. Friends is still huge, I will say, Yeah, it's it's enjoying a renaissance for reasons I haven't yet been able to understand. Now. Movis had originally started as

an actor in the nineteen seventies. Yeah, that didn't work out, so and study moves behind the scenes, and he worked for as a producer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which can I tell them? So when when Ariel wrote that down she had written the smother Brothers Comedy Hour, which it was a type of, it made me laugh so hard because it made me think that it was a comedy hour that has one joke. It's the same joke every week, and you know exactly what it is

from the title. Yeah. Leslie Moonves was tasked to create the New CBS because he was so successful a creating new TV for new era. But at first he tried to do it too quickly. Yeah. The company already had a lot of momentum built up in a certain direction and was already being viewed as a as a company that was catering to an older audience, So switching that up to a younger one super fast ended up being

counterproductive initially. So they were developing about twenty hours of new programming to plug into their lineup for the year, and even if they were only putting in ten to twelve hours of that programming, history showed that maybe two or three hours of that would be really successful and the rest wipe shows that would do okay and need to be changed out in the future. So if they're changing that big chunk of their lineup and it has a low success rate, it's not, in my opinion, very

smart idea. Yeah, So it was still questionable about what moves is Uh impact was going to be on the channel, but as we will see in our next section, it ended up being just what they needed. All right. So after the initial push, what happens next, Well, Moves decides to t a tried in true show and bring it to CBS, to show that had originally been on NBC The Cosby Show, and they started to kind of experiment a bit. They did something that had not been done previously.

They actually showed a preview of their new lineup of TV shows. Yeah, they're hoping that the sneak peek would get younger audiences invested earlier. While showing their program early was a good idea because Movis did have his finger on the pulse of what viewers wanted to watch, look at Friends and things like that. It had mixed success.

I want to mention here that Moonvis was very stereotypical and what he liked, so he was good at developing shows and knowing what shows would take off, even before the trend really took off in television. So you might say shows about geeks are really popular. Like with the Big Bang theory, it wouldn't necessarily be popular at the time. He was trying to integrate it, but he really liked things like alpha males and smart, pretty women and very

stereotypical roles. And he also wanted to keep CBS programming. He wanted to keep it from being too dark, but you get with Showtime or HBO. So he started introducing other new shows like Everybody Loves Raymond. I take issue with that title. You don't love Raymond, I don't hate Raymond.

I'm indifferent towards Raymond. And by seven they had pulled back from introducing too many new shows, so about two thirds of their lineup was returning and about one third was new, and Westing Else would officially change its name to the CBS Corporation and then in an old friend came back to the network. Yes football, yes, the American football,

not not soccer. Not soccer. Now in Viacom, which started as a television syndicate of CBS in the fifties, then split from CBS, got bought a bunch of Times and made a bunch of acquisitions, acquired CBS, and then in two thousand the deal became final. They acquired CBS forty billion dollars. So we see this continue, this trend continue where he starts to work on programming too again grab those younger audiences to turn around this this perception of CBS.

And so you started getting shows like c S I coming out and then really one of the key television shows of the reality television era, Survivor, comes out in two thousand. By two, Survivor has hit thirty eight seasons. That's that's insane, it's impressive. And then he gets some more popular shows that you know, I haven't really watched, like Two and a Half Men. Not not a fan

of it myself, but it was extremely popular. Yes, and then in two thousand four, moonves Mary's early show host Julie Chen and he becomes president and co chief operating officer of Viacom. But Viacom and CBS wouldn't remain a united entity, right, because in two thousand and five they would split into two publicly trade companies, so kind of a reversal of the merger. Yeah, but both were still

owned by Sumner Redstone. Interesting, and then he was named president and CEO of CBS after that split, because obviously he was no longer CEO of Viacom, Right, So this is the point where we start seeing analysts say that his direction had really turned things around for CBS. Yeah, and that's even before Big Bang Theory came out. It was a year before Big Bang Theory were debut. And then around the same time, they launched the c W

and took over showtime. And this was all because of that split between CBS and Viacom that they wouldn't have been possible without that. Those those shows were a part of Viacom, and CBS took them. Yeah. So two thousand and eight, it's the number one network by viewership, but not across all programming. News viewership was down partly because broadcaster wasn't the only game in town anymore. Now you've got all these different cable news stations as well. And

those cable news stations are twenty four hour news. Yeah. Now, in two thousand and eight, I want to do a quick little side note just because it personally impacts me. That's when CBS purchased the web company c net for one point eight billion dollars. And I had a lot of friends who worked over there, some of them still do high friends. I guess that was to compete with

all of the twenty four news networks. Yeah. Well, it's also I've often seen traditional media companies purchase established online companies because it's a business that the traditional media doesn't have a lot of expertise in, and so rather than try to build up natively, which could take a really long time as you get your head wrapped around it, a lot of these traditional media companies will go out and buy an existing company, and that way kind of

it's like trying to get a jump start on that business. So CBS had their finger on the pulse of sitcoms, of reality shows, drama, drama, and they were successful at it for a while, and then in two thousand fourteen they introduced CBS All Access to compete with streaming networks. And this to me is rough because I pay for CBS on my cable subscription, but I cannot watch Star Trek Discovery without buying the all access. Yeah, it's frustrating.

I love CBS programming, but it's another streaming service I gotta buy. I hear we should just watch The Orville. I do enjoy The Orville. Actually program um and two thou fourteen. They also start selling reruns of their shows to their streaming services, and they're getting revenue from local networks and cable playing reruns. So I'm sure NBC is

banking a lot off of Friends still being on Netflix. Yeah, it's it's crazy to think that a program that was made decades ago can still be and it hasn't been on the air for a long time, can still be

making money for for a network like that. All right, Well, one thing that's happened recently, uh, this is fairly recently, within the last year, was that NBC was able to catch up to CBS as and actually overtake it as the most watched network, which first it was the first time it had happened since two thousand two, So this

was in February. Like, that's a long run. But without taking that top spot, which is also kind of amazing when you sit there and think about some of the programming that was on NBC in those in those years too. But you know, the first time, it's two thousand two that NBC had taken the top spot. However, it wasn't like a permanent displacement, right, Yeah. But as of May have two thousand eighteen, CBS hit its tenth season in a row of being America's most watched television network, the

fifteenth time in sixteen years. Because it goes by seasons, so it's not a whole year of being top, it's a season. So there's some things that we want to wrap up with. One is that we haven't really mentioned it, but there's obviously been a lot of talk about allegations of sexual misconduct, specifically directed to Moonves that have been very disturbing, and they came from six different women, so it's not like it's a single person who's made this accusation.

You know, We've obviously seen a lot arise in those reports as women are becoming more empowered and they feel that they have the place to be able to speak up about it. Whereas in years past, the sort of stuff would happen and often would just get swept under the rug. But that is turning around. That's still something

that is playing out to this day. Yeah. In September of two eighteen, Moves resigned and Julie Chen also stepped down from her roles at CBS, and Joe n. L O came out as the acting CEO for CBS at that time, but then into umber. CBS after an investigation it launched into these allegations decided to deny mus a severance package, a hefty one twenty million dollar severance package, saying that he wouldn't cooperate fully with the investigations. Is

fighting back because these allegations are still obviously being investigated. Yeah, but still it's not a good story to tell. And we're back at an old story again about CBS and Viacom. Yeah, there are talks about them re emerging. I guess, I guess they just can't quit each other. Uh yeah, so interesting story. It's uh, whenever we talk about these big media companies and this, I mean, it doesn't get much bigger than a broadcast network. The story is always so complicated.

It's kind of like some of our other really big company stories, and that you have all these major corporate players. You've got lots of maneuvering, You've got lots of talks of acquisitions that may or may not happen. A lot of them are are such big deals that there's questions about whether the FCC would allow to have comment steps in and says nope, you can't. Yeah. So this one was another complicated story. And again it's it's one that's

not over. You know, we've seen the person who is who is pointed at as the savior of CBS now resigned and under investigation. So there's a big question mark there. And the other question mark is can the the new leadership, the relatively new leadership, can they pick up the baton and run with it and keep CBS forefront among the broadcast companies. I guess we'll have to keep our eyes peeled. I guess we need to tune in the TV. Yeah. Well,

until then, we're going to wrap this one up. Let's say that people have questions or maybe a suggestion for a future topic. Where might they reach us? Well, they can reach us at feedback at the Brink podcast dot show, Yes, or you can go to www. Dot the Brink podcast dot show. There you're going to find the archive of all our episodes and also information about Little Me and Little Old Me. Yeah, she's in there too. Until next time, I have been Jonathan Strickland and I have been aerial casting