October 30, 2025

‘BLOOD BATH:’ CBS Parent Company Announces Mass Layoffs, Slashes ‘Race and Culture’ Unit.

CBS News parent company Paramount on Wednesday announced around 2,000 layoffs—including nearly 100 in the newsroom—and eliminated the outlet’s “Race and Culture” unit in an effort to crack down on ideological bias.

As part of the cuts, the network will cancel its streaming shows CBS Mornings Plus and CBS Evening News Plus, shutter its South Africa bureau, and revamp its Saturday morning program, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a source familiar with the changes. Guardian reporter Jeremy Barr also reported on the cuts, posting on X that CBS “gutted” its Race and Culture unit. CBS had tasked that unit with overseeing “news stories about race, culture and injustice, ensuring they have the proper context and tone,” according to a 2020 profile of executive producer Alvin Patrick.

Paramount CEO David Ellison, who has vowed to root out ideological bias at CBS and “right-size” the failing network, announced the moves in an internal memo.

“In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” Ellison wrote. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth. Ultimately, these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success.”

Ellison’s announcement has sent the CBS newsroom into a tailspin, according to the Guardian. One staffer described the layoffs as “nerve-racking” and said, “Seems no one is safe,” while another called the cuts a “blood bath.”

The first radio networks in American began in the 1920s. We’re in a similar inflection point as the mid-to-late 1950s, when the executives who commanded those networks began to realize that thanks to television’s rapid growth after WWII, their media was virtually extinct as a product consumed in the home, and started to retool into something less ubiquitous, to be background noise while in the car, and altered their programming accordingly. The original big three television networks are finally grappling with the notion that the Internet, social media, smart phones, and streaming devices have similarly rendered them a legacy media.

As always, be very careful when around those still consume these analog-era outlets:

Earlier: Columbia Broadcasting Struggle Session Concludes.

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll