{"id":276736,"date":"2010-02-04T09:28:38","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T14:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rhrealitycheck.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/04\/the-plot-is-thicker-cbs-summarily-fires-staff-due-economic-crisis-and-loss-advertising"},"modified":"2010-02-04T10:40:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:40:44","slug":"the-plot-is-thicker-cbs-summarily-fires-staff-due-to-economic-crisis-and-loss-of-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/276736","title":{"rendered":"The Plot Is Thicker: CBS Summarily Fires Staff Due to Economic Crisis and Loss of Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nFor those of you wondering why CBS reversed its longstanding anti-advocacy ad policy in the blink of a network eye, the answer may lie in the attractiveness of $2.5 million for a network whose economic fortunes are sinking&#8230;.and the biggest buoy onto which to grab may be the Christian conservatives willing to put up big money to buy time.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThis past Tuesday, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/2010\/media\/d-day-cbs-news\">according to Felix Gillette<\/a> of the <em>New York Observer<\/em>:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\tCBS News executives and bureau chiefs, led<br \/>\n\tby senior vice president Linda Mason, told their employees that 2009<br \/>\n\thad been a disastrous year in the ad market. They had no cable<br \/>\n\toperation to buoy the sinking revenues.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nThat morning, according to the Gillette, CBS laid off &quot;dozens of employees\u2014including staff members in D.C., San<br \/>\nFrancisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow.&quot;\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\tThe<br \/>\n\tchanges were effective immediately. There would be no buyouts.<br \/>\n\tAccording to one longtime staff member, the network had long ago<br \/>\n\tnegotiated away most of the severance clauses in staff members\u2019<br \/>\n\tcontracts.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n&quot;The cuts were surprisingly deep.&quot;\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t By<br \/>\n\tMonday afternoon, staffers from Washington to L.A. were sputtering in<br \/>\n\tdisbelief as they heard of top producers on the chopping<br \/>\n\tblock\u2014particularly Mark Katkov and Jill Rosenbaum in D.C. and Roberta<br \/>\n\tHollander and Barbara Pierce in L.A. These were seasoned veterans, part<br \/>\n\tof the old school known back in the Dan Rather days as \u201ct<span class=\"c1\">he<br \/>\n\tHard Corps.\u201d Over the years, they had somehow managed to outlive every<br \/>\n\tbig buzz saw to cut through the newsroom. They knew how to get more<br \/>\n\tfrom less. <\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"TEXT\">\n\t&nbsp;\n\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"TEXT\">\n\t<span class=\"c1\">The most disturbing news of the day for many observers was that Larry Doyle would no longer be working for CBS News.<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\t<span class=\"c1\">Mr. Doyle, according to CBS News<br \/>\n\tlegend, joined the organization some 40 years ago, when then D.C.<br \/>\n\tbureau chief Bill Small found him working as a porter at a Washington<br \/>\n\thotel. Mr. Small promptly made Mr. Doyle the bureau\u2019s go-to<br \/>\n\t\u201cdogrobber\u201d\u2014the guy you sent into nasty situations to stare down<br \/>\n\tsnarling subjects and get the job done. From there, Mr. Doyle gradually<br \/>\n\tworked his way up the news ladder, eventually becoming the network\u2019s<br \/>\n\ttop war producer, churning out great television from every hellhole on<br \/>\n\tthe planet\u2014including Baghdad, where he served as the network\u2019s bureau<br \/>\n\tchief during the early years of the ongoing war.<\/span>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"TEXT\">\n&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSo Focus on the Family and CBS may share an agenda.\u00a0 Both organizations have now laid off a large number of employees.\u00a0 Focus on the Family needs a means of driving donations and traffic to its website.\u00a0 CBS needs ad revenue.\u00a0 Its no secret that corporate network media has become increasingly driven by conservative agendas and money.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMarriage made in conservative heaven?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For those of you wondering why CBS reversed its longstanding anti-advocacy ad policy in the blink of a network eye, the answer may lie in the attractiveness of $2.5 million for a network whose economic fortunes are sinking&#8230;.and the biggest buoy onto which to grab may be the Christian conservatives willing to put up big [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4575,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}