Lemon LIVE at 5 | Mainstream Media BLOODBATH! - October 29th, 2025
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Don Lemon Show. Glad that you are here, Lemon Live at 5. We have to talk about something that's going on. We've discussed the media quite a bit in recent months, but this story is, I think, really, really important because now we're seeing where the metal meets the road, so to speak, or what's exactly happening to the networks and what the future is like. So make sure you hit the like, hit the thumbs up. It affects the algorithm. More people become aware of our conversation. That is just the truth. OK, let's get to it. OK, so welcome to the show, everybody. For months, CBS News staffers have been on edge waiting for a long expected round of layoffs as part of a two billion dollar campaign.
in cost-cutting, $2 billion in cost-cutting that had been promised after the parent company Paramount's successful merger with Skydance Media. Okay, so those cuts began on Wednesday morning and have been described as massive. The company declined to provide any specific number to this. One CBS News staffer described the cuts as a bloodbath. saying that they were wide-reaching and affected a number of different departments. As part of the cuts, the network has closed its Johannesburg bureau and is canceling its CBS Morning Plus and CBS Evening News Plus streaming shows. The network's Saturday morning program will undergo a format change, that's according to a source with knowledge of the changes, who was not authorized to comment.
The network's race and culture unit was also gutted. This follows a large layoff, these large layoffs at NBC News earlier this month. So let's talk about all of this, all right? I'm joined now by Ben Smith. He is the co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Semaphore and former media columnist for the New York Times. Also, Mixed Signals podcast, which I have appeared on, and it's quite good. Okay, Ben, tell us what's going on here. This seems like this is a lot of cutting and merging all at once.
Yeah, I mean, I think as anybody watching this show knows, the nature of broadcast has changed so much in the last 20 years, but particularly in the last couple of years. And the kind of expensive, complicated television production that particularly broadcast networks used to have tens of millions of people watching and make hundreds of millions of dollars out of. is in very steep decline. And so in some sense, the biggest picture story is just that these networks now find themselves competing with people like you, people like your friend, Megyn Kelly, and who produce stuff that, you know, are getting huge audiences and are much cheaper to produce than traditional television, which, you know, I mean, you remember this, like if you
I remember once being kind of around a 60 minutes production. The first thing that happens is like a bunch of men carrying giant boxes show up at your office and hang around for a while. Like it's just a very expensive, labor intensive form of production. And I think in some sense, these networks are basically just trying to cut so that they can compete with with more nimble and cheaper Internet production.
OK, look, I'm with you on the cost cutting thing. And as a matter of fact, I did a shoot here at my home studio today that involved two regular, you know, sort of medium sized, not network sized cameras and two iPhones. And I just dialed into a link. I didn't have to go through the satellite and have to go through master control. There weren't 20 people in a control room. There weren't eight producers. You know what I'm saying? So I understand that part. But also there is an ideological bend to this as well, Ben, that you must admit. These networks are moving to the right and they are cozying up to MAGA and Donald Trump. And that's also part of it as well.
Oh, for sure. And and, you know, and it's interesting, you know, for most of our careers, there have been people like I would say Bernie Sanders first among them, people like Ralph Nader saying that, you know, that you shouldn't have these big corporations owning television networks because they were subject to government pressure.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:18–4:26
2
What major newsroom layoffs triggered Don Lemon’s 'bloodbath' warning?
4:26–11:46
3
How does Ben Smith explain the decline of broadcast economics and production?
11:46–18:46
4
Why does corporate ownership and FCC pressure push newsrooms to the right?
18:46–42:25
5
How did content moderation and social platforms influence today’s media politics?
42:25–54:37
Speakers
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