CBS News’ Saturday morning broadcast will look less distinct than the rest of the division’s morning-news programming, according to a person familiar with the matter, following layoffs across parent corporation Paramount Global unveiled Wednesday.
The layoffs will also affect CBS News operations in South Africa, this person says, with a bureau in Johannesburg closing and oversight of the region moving to London. Deb Patta, a well-regarded foreign correspondent who has covered much of the recent strife between Israel and Hamas, will depart, according to two people familiar with the matter. CBS News will scale back its unit devoted to covering race and culture. Additionally. CBS News will cancel two companion programs tied to the weekday programs “CBS Evening News” and “CBS Mornings” that were primarily appearing on its streaming properties, according to one of these people.
Approximately 100 jobs across the news division were affected by the move, part of a larger round of cost cutting at the struggling media conglomerate, which has suffered losses in ratings and ad dollars and lags many of its rivals in its ability to lure consumers to its streaming properties. The Ellison family bought Paramount from its previous controlling shareholders, the Redstones, in August and more cost cutting has been anticipated, even as new management has spent millions to acquire rights to show UFC matches as well as the digital opinion site The Free Press.
The most obvious changes will come at “Saturday Morning,” a program that has focused on feature reporting as well deeper dives into food and music. Most of the staff has been gutted, according to a person familiar with the operation, and anchors Dana Jacboson and Michelle Miller and executive producer Brian Applegate are expected to leave. The has been in executives’ sights for months; Jeff Glor, the former “Evening News” anchor who played a central role on the Saturday broadcast, left CBS News in the fall of 2024 under a separate round of cost-cutting at Paramount. Now, weeklday producers will add the show to their duties.
The small program held its own, keeping its ratings even as rivals at NBC and ABC shed viewers. For the first five weeks of the current season, “Saturday Morning” was enjoying one of its best starts in two decades, according to data from Nielsen.
Other staffers departing include Nikki Battiste, Nancy Chen, Janet Shamilan, Alturo Rhymes, Elise Preston and Lisa Ling, who was hired as a contributor in 2023 to deliver enterprise reporting to various CBS News programs.
The digital programs, “CBS Evening News Plus” and “CBS Mornings Plus,” were created as a means of getting viewers to toggle back and forth between linear and streaming platforms. John Dickerson led a second half hour online following “CBS Evening News,” but with his departure expected at the end of the year, keeping the program going was likely seen as moot. CBS News had dispatched Tony Dokoupil and Adriana Diaz to “CBS Mornings Plus,” a mid-morning program that was being used by some affiliates to fill other A.M. hours.
CBS News has been under duress for months, with two different sets of corporate managers undermining the news division by settling what was seen as a flimsy lawsuit levied against “60 Minutes” and installing an ombudsman with political leanings to adjudicate potential bias claims placed against CBS News. A new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, has been installed. The founder of The Free Press, Weiss has espoused conservative leanings on many issues of the day. The layoffs were not sparked by Weiss, but had been put in place following Paramount’s sale to the Ellisons.