CBS producers and insiders are apparently so sick of Tony DeCoppel and his failing upwards to become a CBS anchor, even though he apparently was never really qualified for the position and indeed is flopping in it now, that they are finally speaking out. We want to give you some of what they're saying. So before he even became the anchor, he posted a video in January [00:00:17] accusing the legacy media of having missed the story by putting too much weight in the analysis of academics and elites and not enough on you. ah He was implying there that the academics, the elites are too liberal. CBS needs to get more MAGA. He said this in January when Donald [00:00:35] Trump was already wildly unpopular and had been for hundreds of days at that point. The idea that we had fresh off of the 2024 election, that the world is fundamentally changed, that culture is becoming more conservative, that MAGA is forever. We were so done with that [00:00:51] long before Tony DeCoppel's like, I got this thing, we're gonna be MAGA. He's just deeply lacking in self awareness. That's not me saying that, that's a current CBS correspondent. Says, I just don't even understand how you can say something like that. That was a CBS executive [00:01:07] who works closely with DeCoppel. He completely lost the room. Okay, so he apparently does have some strengths. He apparently is a good writer, but not great on camera. He had his big break back in 2019 when he was named co-host of CBS This Morning alongside Gail King and [00:01:23] Anthony Mason at that point. He started to rise rapidly in part because of his past as a writer, but also because almost everyone the journalist who wrote the story says is his good looks. Which seem like well then you'll be good on camera. But at a certain point, you can't just [00:01:39] look at the camera. You have to open your mouth and make noises. You have to say things. And cheekbones can only take you so far. They can take you really far, look how far I've come. But you also have to say stuff at some point and he's just not good. And so they're saying things like TV is superficial, it's fake. You just have to be good eye candy and he was good [00:01:58] eye candy. But no, that's not enough. The ratings are going down because of the things he's saying, the positions he's taking, the segments he's choosing to do. They're just bad, they're not good, brat. And you have more experience in this field than me, what do you think? So I [00:02:13] think philosophically, they're at a really weird point. There is no world in which the format of legacy media can be the future. It just can't. People don't take that as what is authenticity and a personal relationship with people the way that they used to. It used to be a lot [00:02:31] easier to convince people that this is just a person that's your friend. You're letting them into your uh living room every night as you gather around it and learn for a half hour to an hour. what's going on in the world before they hand it off to the local news, before they hand it off to a late night house. All of that's just kind of going away. Three people [00:02:51] are sitting in one living room, each on different devices, watching their own thing that's in their hand, in their lap. It's just not a format that you can really harness in the way that CBS is trying to harness in. What they're doing is only targeted at old people that watch [00:03:10] evening news. And yes, traditionally you can get away with just being a pretty face and delivering these lines in a comforting way. But the jig is up basically because you just replace 60 minutes at that network. And grandma like 60 minutes a lot more than she likes Tony [00:03:28] Dachapel. Right, just like had you slowly changed and retired things and just change the face and slowly change the messaging, you can get away with that. Cuz grandma's not gonna notice. But you just put Barry Weiss in charge and you just like stab Morley Safer's ghost. They [00:03:51] know what's going on and no one's aging into that. Yeah, that's the problem. It's rough. And look, I think it's partly, I think this is kind of who he is. But he's also, I'm sure, being encouraged to do far more of it because of the, he's a bad on camera guy and they [00:04:10] have uh totally unqualified and partisanly sort of corrupted Barry Weiss. So bad leadership, bad hosts, bad impulses, bad motivations and incentives to just do MAGA stuff to, I guess make Trump happy or not even just Trump, maybe other people too. uh Remember he did that weird [00:04:28] ass kissing meme segment about Marco Rubio. One CBS News journalist said of that the Marco Rubio thing was outrageous, it just alienates the audience. I don't think even a MAGA Republican wants to see that in the news. They said he lacks sophistication. This is what happens when you get somebody who's only ever worked on a morning show, ouch. When he just thinks, [00:04:46] yeah, why don't we dedicate two minutes of this 90 minute broadcast to glazing Marco F-ing Rubio. Yeah, it's bad. And again, it's not just him, it's Barry Weiss. Barry Weiss hired controversial contributors, some of which she then had to part ways with because of their Epstein connections. She brought staffers over from the free press who had no experience in broadcast. When the [00:05:05] new show first launched, nobody knew what the hell they were doing. Nobody had the courtesy to come in and say, so we're the new guys, how do you do this? She apparently tapped Sasha Seinfeld, a free press staffer to write for the evening news, raising eyebrows in the newsroom. Being Jerry Seinfeld's daughter does not make one a skilled TV news writer, unless it's [00:05:23] a show about nothing, I suppose. And lately, that's what it's kind of felt like, done, done, Final thoughts, Brett? No, that's it. It's just a ridiculous setup that they have over there at CBS News. it's always, it's never really led. Yeah. In anywhere but 60 minutes and you [00:05:40] can't get 60 minutes and be like, don't you like this beautiful guy? And also he's not as pretty as the guy at ABC. David Muir is just a hotter person so- David Muir, I think looks like- David Muir looks like what you act like Gavin Newsom looks like. David Muir is actually [00:05:56] like, anyway, and look people are saying, in male words is, hey John, you're more than a pretty face. I know, I know. There's the body too, I know.