Business leaders are usually obsessed when it comes to burnishing their image after exiting the spotlight. Some write books, like former GE CEO Jack Welch. But that takes a lot of time and effort.
If they want to try to control how they’re being perceived and do it pronto, they try to find a sympathetic journalist to write a supportive, if not flattering piece in a high-profile publication.
So I wasn’t a bit surprised when this past week, Shari Redstone helped New York Times correspondent James Stewart write a namby-pamby piece on why she sold Paramount/CBS to nepo baby and Hollywood producer David Ellison for $2.4 billion.
Redstone told Stewart she sold out because she “just wanted to be free” and that “it was no fun” trying to run her father Sumner’s beloved company.
If Ms. Redstone was looking for “fun” she certainly was in the wrong line of work. The company’s properties, the cable stations and the linear broadcast properties, are like melting ice cubes. We all learned the now-cancelled Late Show with Stephen Colbert was losing $40 million a year and CBS News, as reported by Puck, is hemorrhaging $50 million. And those are just two examples.
Redstone tried competing with the streaming giants like Netflix and Disney by pouring money into Paramount+, but she just didn’t have enough cash to make a credible run.
The company her dad left her was worth over $25 billion when he died. It was valued at $8 billion when she unloaded it.
But wait, there’s more. After October 7th and the Hamas murderous and psychopathic attack on Israel, Redstone told The Times she realized she had to sell out because “I wanted to support Israel and address issues around racism and antisemitism.”
That’s when my b.s. detector started going haywire.
I worked at CBS from 2006-2021. I was in charge of local news in New York and I also oversaw the CBS-owned local news operations around the nation.
In January, 2021, I was abruptly and publicly canceled by the DEI culture and its enforcers at CBS over spurious charges of racism, sexism and homophobia. (That’s the triple crown of cancelable offenses, don’t you think?)
Their own six-month extensive and expensive investigation found I wasn’t guilty of the allegations, but in the overheated cancel culture that CBS wholeheartedly participated in, it was too late. The damage to me was done.
It was Shari Redstone who allowed her executives at CBS to nurture and grow that cancel culture, that culture that branded white employees with built-in biases. A culture that demanded personnel and news decisions be subjected to a race and culture litmus test. A woke-beyond-woke culture.
I wrote about some of that last year in two posts, A Jew at CBS and Can CBS be Saved? Go back and read them to refresh your memories about what working for Shari Redstone’s company was like, especially for Jews, the people, her people she now says she sold her company to help.
The new owners say they’re disbanding the company’s mighty DEI division. Let’s see if that is just lip service to Donald Trump to get the deal past federal regulators because George Cheeks, the guy who lived and breathed DEI at Paramount for Redstone, is now working for Ellison and crew. Race, culture, DEI, wokeism, unconscious bias, all oozed through Cheeks’ pores, aided and abetted by Shari Redstone.
So please forgive me for becoming nauseous when I read the Why Did Shari Redstone Do It article.
Because when she was the woman in charge, she had the chance to do it, but didn’t.