The new two-man team of John Dickerson and Maurice Dubois will take over the evening slot beginning Monday. The broadcast, which had been based in Washington D.C., will return to New York, and Margaret Brennan will serve as lead correspondent from Washington, D.C.

O’Donnell will stay at the network as a senior correspondent, promising viewers that they’ll see her on CBS News programs including “60 Minutes” and “Sunday Morning.”

In July, O’Donnell shared a note with CBS staffers announcing her exit, “There’s so much work to be proud of! But I have spent 12 years in the anchor chair here at CBS News, tied to a daily broadcast and the rigors of a relentless news cycle. It’s time to do something different.”

“Norah will have the time and the support to deliver even more of the exceptional stories she is known for across our shows and streams, across CBS network and Paramount+,” president and CEO of CBS News Wendy McMahon added. “She will have the real estate and flexibility to leverage big bookings on numerous platforms.”

As she said her final good night Thursday, her CBS News colleagues gathered around her and applauded.

O’Donnell follows a short but powerful line of women who have helmed their own news broadcasts. In 1993, Connie Chung was the first woman to co-host a network news show: She was given second billing behind Dan Rather on “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather and Connie Chung,” which ran through 1995.

Over a decade later, in 2006, Katie Couric became the first woman to anchor a news program by herself. She hosted the CBS Evening News through 2011.

Over at ABC, Diane Sawyer served as the nightly news anchor for ABC World News Tonight from 2009 to 2014.

The post Norah O’Donnell Signs Off From CBS News, Oprah Winfrey Praises Her ‘Incredible Impact’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Yes, ditching Acosta — who has had a well-publicized contentious relationship with President Donald Trump, who reentered the White House this week — was a notable move, one that many will perceive as an olive branch to the new administration.

Still, the changes are more cosmetic than colossal: Jake Tapper, perhaps the network’s most respected anchor, saw his start time moved back an hour to 5 p.m. ET; Wolf Blitzer, who has been with the network since 1990, will now do his two-hour show in the morning instead of the evening; and both Kaitlan Collins and Anderson Cooper’s shows will remain in their same nightly time slot.

It is hard to expect a major ratings boost when the channel’s main faces remain the same.

Before the formal announcement Thursday, several of the changes had been leaked to media outlets. But even if some of the moves appear warranted, they don’t address the other challenges with which the network is grappling. Those hurdles include, but aren’t limited to, dwindling ratings, declining revenue driven by “cord cutting” that has assailed the entire cable business, and a collapse in public trust of mainstream journalism.

CNN’s primetime viewership — just like MSNBC’s — cratered in the weeks following the 2024 presidential election. The network’s primetime ratings dropped 35% to 470,000 viewers by mid-November. By contrast, Fox News — which enjoys a much cozier relationship with Trump — saw its primetime audience grow 34%, to 3.157 million viewers following his electoral victory.

While Fox’s rivals have regained some audience after losing viewers to what many saw as election fatigue, a full ratings recovery has still not occurred for CNN, with its primetime lineup averaging 501,000 viewers during the first week of January.

A person with knowledge of CNN’s changes said it is too simplistic to point to the network’s ratings being down. The CNN source pointed out there were only 161 million cable subscribers in the U.S. on Inauguration Day 2025, compared to 251 million in 2017 — a byproduct of the aforementioned cord cutting — so a ratings decline is expected.

Instead, the changes, the person said, signify a fundamental shift for CNN, which intends to prioritize its digital and streaming business moving forward. CNN announced a $70 million investment into its digital business on Thursday, and said it would add at least 100 new roles this year for a new streaming service. (Those announcements came at the same time CNN laid off another 200 staffers.)

Whether revenue growth comes from CNN’s cable or digital business, one side needs to pick up the slack because the network is not making as much money as it used to.

In a defamation lawsuit that CNN lost last week to a U.S. Navy veteran, a forensic economist for the plaintiff found the company’s revenue had dropped 18.1% from 2021 to 2023, sliding from $2.2 billion to $1.8 billion. CNN’s net worth was nearly sliced in half during that same period, from $4.4 billion in 2021 to $2.3 billion in 2023, according to the forensic economist.

A CNN spokesperson said those figures were inaccurate.

“The numbers represent the Plaintiff’s interpretation of a subset of data as presented in litigation, and they do not represent financial data for the whole of CNN’s business,” the spokesperson told TheWrap.

Perhaps more importantly, the defamation lawsuit came at a time when the American public’s trust in mainstream outlets like CNN has eroded.

CNN was ordered to pay the veteran $5 million, after a segment on Tapper’s show in 2021 said he “exploited” desperate Afghans fleeing the country on the “black market.” The network then settled with the veteran, Zachary Young, before a Florida jury could decide on punitive damages — a move that was reminiscent of CNN settling its defamation lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann back in 2020.

Headlines like that will not help CNN win back viewers or readers in an already-difficult climate for news outlets. An October Gallup poll from earlier this month found only 31% of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media to accurately report the news — a new all-time low. Americans are now turning to alternative sources like YouTube to get their news and opinions, while gravitating toward more partisan political sites that share their ideology.

In March, CNN’s Thompson laid out a five-point plan to restructure the network for the future in a difficult news environment. To the extent that Thompson is revamping the TV component of his business, leaving its core anchors in place will likely do little to reverse those trends.

The post CNN’s Lineup Changes: The Flawed Thinking Behind Mark Thompson’s Latest Move | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

Speaking to the “Hollywood Raw” podcast, the former CNN anchor gushed that, as far as he can tell, “people love” the former “Today” show host, who was fired in 2017 by NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace” which the network determined “may not have been an isolated incident.”

2 years later, in Ronan Farrow’s 2019 expose “Catch and Kill,” Lauer was accused on the record of sexually harassing several former NBC colleagues, and one former NBC producer accused him of raping her. The book also reports that Harvey Weinstein once attempted to use his knowledge of Lauer’s behavior to convince NBC to back off reporting about his own sexual misconduct. Lauer has denied all accusations.

Lemon added, “Whenever I see Matt out and about — or if we go out to dinner, my husband and I go out to dinner with him and his fiancée — people love him. Women love him! They’re like, ‘Matt, oh my God, can I get a picture? I love you. I miss you on television, blah, blah, blah.”

Lemon continued, “I think the public loves him. The public misses him, but it’s the people inside the business who are afraid.”

For his part, Lemon was fired from CNN in 2023 for remarks that were considered sexist and ageist. He briefly hosted a talk show on Elon Musk’s X, but has now found a new home on YouTube with “The Don Lemon Show.”

When asked on the podcast if Lauer could mount a comeback to the news industry, Lemon answered: “If he could come back to digital, he can set his own course.”

Lemon’s comments about Lauer begin at the 30:46 mark in the embedded video below.

Lemon suggested, “maybe in this whole Trump era where canceled is over,” there’s a greater chance for Lauer to make a comeback. “I think the general public would accept Matt back. And I think people would watch him and I think the ratings would be great,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about what happened, I know nothing about that at all,” Lemon concluded, referring to the allegations against Lauer. “Women can feel the way that they feel and I understand that but that’s their business. I know when I’m out with him, everybody loves Matt, and everybody flocks to Matt and everyone wants a picture and everyone says ‘I miss you and we wanna see you back on television.’ I hear it every time.”

Lemon clarified that he “only got to know Matt after, you know, the whole situation happened” and that they met through mutual friends. Lauer denied assaulting anyone, but admitted at the time, “there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.”

The post Don Lemon Thinks Matt Lauer Needs a Comeback: ‘Women Love Him’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

The former exec joined the company in 2018.

Village Roadshow has backed numerous titles including “Joker,” “The Matrix Resurrections” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” to name a few.

The company previously worked with Warner Brothers however, Village Roadshow has been arbitrating with the studio over the previous regime’s decision to release 2021’s “The Matrix Resurrections” on HBO Max.

Back in December, the Writer’s Guild issued a stop work order against the company for stiffing multiple writers.

“It has come to the Guild’s attention that over the last few months Village Roadshow hasn’t paid writers on numerous projects. Village Roadshow owes writers compensation, interest, and benefit contributions but has refused to pay. As such, the Guild has determined that Village Roadshow is not reliable or financially responsible and requires the posting of a bond to protect writers. Village Roadshow has, to date, refused to do so,” WGA leadership previously said in a memo. “As a result, Village Roadshow is on the WGA strike list until further notice.”

Village Roadshow is owned by Vine Alternative Investments.

Prior to joining Village Roadshow, Mosko spent 24 years at Sony Pictures Entertainment, 16 of those running global television.

Variety first reported the news.

The post Village Roadshow CEO Steve Mosko Steps Down Following Layoffs, Pay Scandal appeared first on TheWrap.

That dig came after he said the network was “even worse than CNN.” Trump included a news story from Mediate on CNN laying off hundreds of employees with his post.

Of course, MSNBC is not technically a broadcast network but rather a cable news channel. But still, his intention was clear.

This is also not the first time Trump has gone off on MSNBC. Last year, Trump said the network and its parent company, Comcast, were engaged in “illegal political activity” by donating to Democratic candidates. He also called longtime Comcast CEO Brian Roberts a “slimeball” who has “been able to get away with these constant attacks for years.”

Trump’s criticism comes as MSNBC faces a hazy future. In November, Comcast announced it would spin off its cable assets — including MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and Golf Channel — into a standalone, publicly traded company.

Combined, those cable channels generated $7 billion in sales between September 2023 and September 2024. Comcast will retain its Peacock streaming service, Bravo and NBC — which includes its news division.

MSNBC enjoyed a strong Election Night, however, beating CNN in the ratings for the first time ever, but its viewership cratered by 51% in the weeks following the election. The corporate changes, combined with the ratings drop off, had MSNBC talent like “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough questioning their longterm future at the channel.

“I could be completely wrong. We could all be fired a year from now. You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” Scarborough said in November.

In related news, CNN on Thursday announced several changes to its lineup, including shifting Jake Tapper’s time slot and removing Jim Acosta from his morning show.

The post Trump Blasts MSNBC: ‘Shouldn’t Even Have a Right to Broadcast’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Tapper’s show “The Lead” is being moved an hour later, and will now air from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. ET. each weekday. Acosta, who has had many memorable squabbles with President Donald Trump, will no longer host “CNN Newsroom” from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. during the week.

That time will now occupied by “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown,” which will air from 10:00 a.m. to noon ET. Blitzer had been broadcasting from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. ET each night. Kasie Hunt is also getting a new show that will air from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET.

The changes do not affect Anderson Cooper, who will continue to broadcast his “Anderson Cooper 360” show at 8:00 p.m. ET. Kaitlan Collins’ show, which airs at 9:00 p.m. ET each night, is also staying in the same spot.

Rahel Solomon and Audie Cornish will each get new morning shows as part of CNN’s shakeup. Solomon will host “5 Things with Rahel Solomon” from 5:00a.m. to 6:00 a.m. ET during the week, and Cornish will host “CNN This Morning” from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m ET.

Thursday’s programming changes come after CNN laid off hundreds of employees earlier in the day. Despite the layoffs, CEO Mark Thompson noted CNN expects to fill 100 new jobs in the first half of 2025. Those roles come in part from a $70 million investment from Warner Bros. Discovery, according to The New York Times.

CNN also announced it will be launching a new, currently-unnamed streaming service on Thursday.

“The changes we’re announcing today are part of an ongoing response by this great news organization to profound and irreversible shifts in the way audiences in America and around the world consume news,” Thompson shared in a memo.

Programming and other changes have been anticipated over the past few months, after CNN took a big ratings hit following the 2024 presidential election.

Here’s a look at CNN’s full programming lineup moving forward:

• 5-6a ET: “5 Things with Rahel Solomon“
• 6-7a ET: “CNN This Morning with Audie Cornish“
• 7-10a ET: “CNN News Central“
• 10a-12p ET: “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown“
• 12-1p ET: “Inside Politics with Dana Bash“
• 1-4p ET: “CNN News Central“
• 4-5p ET: “CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt“
• 5-7p ET: “The Lead with Jake Tapper“
• 7-8p ET: “Erin Burnett OutFront“
• 8-9p ET: “Anderson Cooper 360“
• 9-10p ET: “The Source with Kaitlan Collins“
• 10-11p ET: “NewsNight with Abby Phillip“
• 11p-12a ET: “Laura Coates Live“

The post CNN Shakeup: Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer Change Times, Jim Acosta Removed appeared first on TheWrap.

“Elon Musk is being falsely smeared,” Netanyahu posted on X, the platform Musk owns. “Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the Oct. 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

He continued: “He has since repeatedly and forcefully supported Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state. I thank him for this.”

Netanyahu’s support comes after Musk has been ripped by many over the past few days. On Monday, Musk, while thanking Trump supporters at a victory rally at Capitol One Arena in Washington, D.C., slapped his chest and extended his right arm upwards. His detractors immediately condemned the gesture as a “sieg heil” Nazi salute.

“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert was one of those critics who mocked Musk for the salute on his show. “Wow, that sure looked like what it was,” the host quipped on Tuesday. “Now, I don’t know if Musk intended to do a Nazi salute. He says he is not a Nazi, but what I do know is people who aren’t Nazis know how to avoid doing a Nazi salute.”

Musk has denounced claims he’s an anti-Semite previously, telling CNBC in 2023, “I’m a pro-Semite, if anything.” The following year, after visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Musk said he was “aspirationally Jewish.”

“I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. I’m like Jewish by association,” he told Shapiro.

On Thursday morning, Musk joked about the recent salute controversy with an X post that referred to several Nazi leaders.

The post Netanyahu Defends Elon Musk Over Salute: ‘Falsely Smeared’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Still, despite these layoffs, CEO Mark Thompson noted they are also expected to fill 100 new jobs in the first half of 2025. Those roles come in part from a $70 million investment from Warner Bros. Discovery, according to The New York Times.

“The changes we’re announcing today are part of an ongoing response by this great news organization to profound and irreversible shifts in the way audiences in America and around the world consume news,” Thompson shared in a memo.

“It’s early days, but we’ve already established that there’s immense demand for it not just in America but across much of the world,” he added of the impending streaming service, which will “develop a new way for digital subscribers at home and abroad to stream news programming from us on any device they choose.”

Other notable changes include Jim Acosta’s daytime show being replaced by “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown,” as well as a new morning show led by Audie Cornish.

While CNN is expected to remain present on Max, this new streamer will be similar to its TV offerings. Another subscription-based model will be set around lifestyle content, such as food and fitness.

“This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question. If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good,” Thompson told the NYT. “In the end, this is about CNN being — as it has been in its history — an indispensable way in which many, many millions of people get their news.”

TheWrap has reached out to CNN for further comment.

The post CNN to Slash 200 Jobs, Launch New Streaming Service in Post-Election Restructuring appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Washington Post editorial this morning essentially equating Biden’s questionable pardons with Trump’s outrageous Jan. 6 pardons was unconscionable,” David Maraniss, a 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner who has been with the paper nearly 50 years, wrote on Bluesky. “The newspaper I’ve been part of for 48 years has utterly lost its soul.”

Maraniss didn’t link to the editorial in question, but he appears to be referring to one actually published late Tuesday by Jason Willick, titled “The Biden-Trump pardons show collapsing executive restraint.”

Among its arguments, the op-ed says “it’s debatable which president’s abuse of the pardon power on Monday… was more damaging,” and describes them as “tit-for-tat escalations.”

While it does refer to Trump’s mass-pardons for Jan.6 insurrectionists “indefensible,” it largely treats Biden’s preemptive pardons of people Trump has threatened to persecute with state power as, effectively, morally equivalent.

Maraniss didn’t follow up on the comment, and as of this writing he has not announced he is resigning from the paper. But it’s not the first time he’s called out his employer in such direct terms. In October, after owner Jeff Bezos killed the Washington Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, Maraniss wrote on Twitter, “Once again but this time more than ever I am embarrassed for my newspaper. The decision in this of all years to not endorse when democracy is on the line is contemptible.”

“The paper I’ve loved working at for 47 years is dying in darkness,” Maraniss added, referring to slogan it adopted during Donald Trump’s first term, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

And he’s far from the only WaPo vet to revolt as Bezos forces the paper in a decidedly conservative, clearly pro-Trump direction. Among them was columnist Michele Norris, who called the decision to spike the Harris endorsement “a terrible mistake & an insult to the paper’s own longstanding standard.”

Editor at large Robert Kagan also resigned, while writer Molly Roberts and Pultizer Prize-winning journalist David Hoffman both resigned from the board in protest. And the Post’s most famous alumni, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, condemned the decision strongly.

More recently, longtime WaPo editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned on Jan. 3 after editors pulled a cartoon that criticized Bezos.

Bezos has steadfastly stuck by the stark changes he’s imposed on the Post since last fall, enacted at the same time the billionaire visibly became one of Trump’s most prominent courtiers. But the changes have been a disaster for the paper, cratering subscriptions and revenues.

The post Washington Post Editor Slams Paper for Op-Ed ‘Essentially Equating’ Biden, Trump Pardons: ‘Utterly Lost Its Soul’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Burgess claimed to have videos of the rapper sexually assaulting celebrities and minors who were clearly inebriated. Burgess was later subpoenaed by federal prosecutors and testified in front of a grand jury about the alleged videos.

The defamation suit, which was filed on Wednesday in New York claims Burgess, Mitchell and Nextstar engaged in “willful scheme to fabricate and broadcast outrageous lies.” The suit goes on to say that these falsehoods were leveraged “to gain social media fame, enrich themselves, and strip Mr. Combs of his reputation, livelihood, and a right to a fair trial.”

“Combs is taking a stand against the malicious falsehoods that have been fabricated and amplified by individuals seeking to profit at his expense.” Combs’ attorney Erica Wolff shared in a statement with Variety. “These defendants have willfully fabricated and disseminated outrageous lies with reckless disregard for the truth. Their falsehoods have poisoned public perception and contaminated the jury pool. This complaint should serve as a warning that such falsehoods, which undermine Mr. Combs’s right to a fair trial, will no longer be tolerated.”

In the original interview with NewsNation, Burgess said he was working in the Atlanta music industry when Combs’ ex-girlfriend Kim Porter, who shares four children with the rapper, gave him 11 flash drives that contained sex tapes involving at least eight celebrities. 

Burgess allegedly also received Porter’s personal memoir “Kim’s Lost Words: A Journey for Justice, from the other side.” The book reports of physical abuse and acts of sexual coercion and violence that the rapper committed. Ariel Mitchell, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit, said the tapes “tell the story of what Diddy has done over the past 30 years” including his “deviant activities.” 

Combs was charged on September 16, 2024. He pleaded not guilty to multiple counts including allegations he coerced and abused women and sex trafficking by force. The indictment also states he silenced victims through tactics like blackmail, kidnapping and physical beatings. He was denied bail and remains incarcerated. His trial is scheduled to begin on May 5th, but it is unclear if new evidence will further delay the proceedings.  

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