Hey, CBS Braintrust. We’ve Got Our Eyes On What You Will Do Next.

MEMO TO: WENDY MCMAHON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CBS NEWS AND STATIONS AND CBS MEDIA VENTURES

FROM: STEVE LEBLANG, MEDIA CONSULTANT, SL MEDIA ENTERPRISES

RE: ALL THIS NEWS STUFF

Hello again, Ms. McMahon.  It’s been a while since my last outreach and boy, has your plate filled up.  You have jurisdiction over just about everything outside entertainment that still has the CBS name on it–not that anyone besides you seems to have much interest in keeping that brand top of mind.

After all, the last time we connected you had just announced the rollout of your local news strategy that effectively removed traditional call letters and channel numbers from public view, instead now referencing your duopolies and streaming services under the monicker “CBS _____”, with the city or region of the country now completing each entity’s nomenclature.   Your in-house creative guru repurposed the yellow he purpotedly “invented” while he was running the show at one of your competitors and, best of all, since a goodly number of your stations aren’t even affiliated with the network, you signed off on minimizing the iconic “eye” from their logos.

And, as you may or may not recall, I actually gave you some props for doing that despite its eschewing of decades of identity for doing so.  After all, as NEWSCAST STUDIO reported at the time, you did claim to use good old fashioned audience intelligence as part of your decision-making process.

McMahon notes, however, that the overall rebranding is very much a market-by-market approach heavily guided by market-level research and data from partners such as SmithGeiger and Magid.

“We have research in each and every one of our markets,” said McMahon. “We’ve tested this to a place where we feel we make a decision that’s most aligned with our audiences and our viewers.”… This move to call letters, from a branding perspective, makes it easier to have a cohesive identity across platforms – given there is no need for channel numbers on a streaming platform. 

As someone who has utilized the services of those companies on dozens of occasions myself, I applaud you.  They’re very, very good at identifying what reactions to current market stimuli are.  But I’m sure your research colleagues would concede that their ability to orchestrate evolution is not quite on the level of Nostradamus.

And yep, I’ve seen your local market ratings and demographics since all of this was instituted.  It must be those Luddites at Nielsen who can’t quite figure out just yet how to report local streaming with full inclusivity and accuracy that’s kept the majority of the efforts in those markets trailing their competitiors both linearally and digitally.

Yet your star has grown and your portfolio has been expanded, even as the Redstone saga tore down a great deal of the corporate fortress that protected your sandbox from outside forces.  So much so, in fact, that yesterday it was announced that you’re delegating some of those day-to-day duties to a couple of your preferred lieutenants who are apparently also expanding their roles.  Per BROADCASTING AND CABLE’s Michael Malone:

CBS News and Stations has introduced what it calls “a new editorial leadership structure,” with Adrienne Roark, who has been president, content development and integration, CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures, and Jennifer Mitchell, who had been president, CBS Stations (West Coast-Midwest), expanding their roles. 

Roark has been named president of editorial and newsgathering for CBS News and Stations, and will lead teams in the field and across newsrooms to drive the daily network news “content engine,” in CBS’s words, including correspondents, assignment desks, bureaus, booking teams, standards and practices, the Super Desk central newsgathering and storytelling platform and CBS News Radio. She will continue to lead the CBS Local News Innovation Lab in Dallas-Fort Worth, the Centers of Excellence built around data journalism, weather and specialized beats/units, WCBS-WLNY New York and WBZ-WSBK Boston.

Roark will assume CBS News’ editorial leadership responsibilities that had been held by Ingrid Ciprián-Matthews, who had been president of CBS News and transitioned into a new role as CBS’s senior editorial adviser.

Mitchell will become president of stations and digital for CBS News and Stations, and will assume primary responsibility for CBS Stations, as well as the division’s local and national digital properties. She will oversee 23 of the 27 CBS-owned stations, including seven stations in the east that had been led by Roark.  

Gotta tell ya, Ms. McMahon.  That’s out-of-the box thinking in this day and age.  Take some folks who, like yourself, come from the world of local television and give them stewardship of the whole dang network.  But hey, some top notch folks of the distant past took a similar route.   CBS once had a president who was a station manager in Watertown, New York.  I’m sure you already knew all about Tony Malara but on the off chance you didn’t, the internet once again can come to your rescue.

That local-centric background might actually explain some of the other decisions your team reached last week when announcing the upcoming changes for the CBS EVENING NEWS in the wake of Norah O’Donnell’s decision to move on.  As your own website reported it:

After the presidential election, award-winning journalists John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois will anchor the “CBS Evening News” as the show returns to the CBS Broadcast Center in New York.

Margaret Brennan, CBS News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent and moderator of “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” will regularly lead coverage from Washington, D.C., when news breaks on the political and foreign affairs fronts. Lonnie Quinn is being named chief weathercaster for the show and will deliver the latest weather reporting and forecasts from the new AR/VR studio in New York. 

I’ll be eagerly awaiting for John and Maurice to report on it, right after Lonnie’s forecast.