One day after CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss laid out her vision for the future of the network, it appears as if some current employees aren’t included in that vision.
On Wednesday morning, the network began offering buyouts to employees working on CBS Evening News.
The news of buyouts being offered at CBS News comes after Weiss shared that the network had been slowed to adopt more modern content philosophies.
“I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st Century,” she said. “Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years, and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here.”
She added that the network needs to do a better job appealing to viewers.
“We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves. We are not producing a product that enough people want,” she said. Weiss added that “We can blame demographics, or technology, or fractured attention spans, or ‘news avoidance,’ but these are all copes.”
Buyouts at CBS Evening News come amid an increased focus on the program. After taking over the reins, Weiss appointed Tony Dokoupil to lead the nightly newscast. Following his debut, the ratings initially slumped before rising 16% during his third week leading the program. Despite the uptick in viewership, the CBS News program still lags well behind its competitors at NBC News and ABC News.
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