Exclusive | Inside Bari Weisss shaky, arms-length relationship with the president of CBS News as ratings hit all-time low
CBS News’ viewership is at an all-time low as editor in chief Bari Weiss’ and the network’s president Tom Cibrowski have displayed jarringly different visions for how to revamp the struggling outlet — leading some staffers to tag the mismatched duo “the odd couple,” The Post has learned.Weiss, the 42-year-old co-founder of scrappy news site The Free Press, took the helm in October with a plan for an aggressive digital strategy, a politically centrist editorial vision and an eye on restoring the home of Edward R.Murrow and Walter Cronkite with hard news and enterprise reporting.Meanwhile, insiders say CBS News President Cibrowski — a TV veteran from ABC News who spent years producing the top-ranked “Good Morning America” and “World News Tonight” — has tried to boost ratings with softer coverage that’s more squarely aimed at Middle America.Sources said Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, who took control of CBS’s parent company last fall, had been hoping that Weiss and Cibrowski — who had joined CBS News early last year under the network’s previous owner Shari Redstone — would complement each others’ skills.Increasingly, it’s looking like a flopped bet.“They are an odd couple to me,” said a CBS insider.
“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of synergies between them.”A source close to the network brushed off any suggestion that Weiss and Cibrowski are an “odd couple,” instead calling their visions “complementary.” The person added that Cibrowski is taking “some ingredients of ABC” and mixing it with Weiss’ “fresh perspective,” noting that it will “take time” to see progress.Nevertheless, according to a source, Weiss had tried to hire former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim, when she joined the company in October, The Post has learned.Oppenheim, now a Hollywood screenwriter and producer, politely declined the offer, a source said.Oppenheim did not return requests for comment.
In recent months, sources...