# CBS Timeline Chronological reference for the network that built the standard of American broadcast journalism — the "Tiffany Network" of [[Edward R. Murrow]] and [[Walter Cronkite]] — and then, in 2025–2026, became the KB's defining example of [[Media Capture]]: a legacy newsroom realigned with state power not by censorship law but by a change of owner. CBS's hundred-year arc runs from [[William S. Paley]]'s 1928 purchase of a failing radio chain, through the golden age that made "the most trusted man in America" a CBS anchor, through decades of [[Media Consolidation]] under [[Sumner Redstone]]'s [[Viacom]], to the 2024–2026 sale to [[David Ellison]]'s Skydance — which delivered control of CBS News to a Trump-aligned ownership at the very moment the administration was suing the network. Sister timelines: [[Paramount Timeline]], [[Fox News Timeline]], [[Netflix Timeline]]. --- ## Era 1 — Paley Builds a Network (1927–1945) - **January 27, 1927** — **United Independent Broadcasters**, a small radio chain, is founded in Chicago — the seed of CBS. It is renamed the **Columbia Broadcasting System** after a brief partnership with the Columbia Phonograph Company. - **September 1928** — **[[William S. Paley]]**, heir to a cigar fortune, buys a majority stake (51%) and becomes president. He will run CBS for the next six decades, turning a money-losing affiliate group into a dominant national network through aggressive affiliate recruiting and a focus on prestige programming. - **1938** — **[[Edward R. Murrow]]** is named head of CBS's European bureau. His live radio reports from London during the Blitz — "This… is London" — invent modern broadcast war correspondence and establish CBS News as a serious journalistic institution. - **1930s–1940s** — CBS becomes the "Tiffany Network," competing with NBC for radio dominance and building the news division ("Murrow's Boys") that will define broadcast journalism for a generation. ## Era 2 — The Murrow Standard and the Golden Age (1946–1964) - **1951** — *See It Now*, Murrow's television newsmagazine with producer **[[Don Hewitt]]**, debuts — pioneering the documentary style that 60 Minutes will later industrialize. - **March 9, 1954** — **Murrow's *See It Now* broadcast on Senator Joseph McCarthy** dismantles the senator's demagoguery using his own footage. The program is a landmark in press independence and the most-cited example in the KB of broadcast journalism confronting state power — the inverse of what CBS becomes in 2026. **RWKB angle**: the Murrow-vs-McCarthy episode is invoked repeatedly during the Weiss-era 60 Minutes fights as the standard CBS is accused of abandoning. - **1958** — Murrow's "wires and lights in a box" speech warns that television will be merely "wires and lights in a box" unless it is used to educate and illuminate — a prophetic critique of the medium's commercial drift. - **1962** — **[[Walter Cronkite]]** becomes anchor of the *CBS Evening News*. ## Era 3 — Cronkite, 60 Minutes, and Peak Trust (1965–1985) - **1963** — Cronkite anchors CBS's coverage of the Kennedy assassination; the *CBS Evening News* expands to 30 minutes, the first network newscast to do so. - **February 27, 1968** — After visiting Vietnam, **Cronkite delivers an on-air editorial** calling the war "mired in stalemate." Lyndon Johnson reportedly says, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Polls later call Cronkite "the most trusted man in America." - **September 24, 1968** — **[[Don Hewitt]] launches [[60 Minutes]]** — the television newsmagazine that becomes the most successful and influential program in broadcast news history, running continuously for the next six decades and setting the standard for investigative TV journalism. Its editorial independence from corporate is the institutional culture that 2025–2026 ownership shatters. - **1981** — Cronkite retires; **Dan Rather** succeeds him as anchor, beginning a more contentious era for the news division. ## Era 4 — Takeover Threats and Ownership Turbulence (1985–1999) - **1985** — CBS fends off a hostile takeover attempt by Senator Jesse Helms's conservative group **Fairness in Media** (which urged supporters to "become Dan Rather's boss") and a separate bid by Ted Turner. **RWKB angle**: the Helms campaign is an early, explicit conservative-movement attempt to seize editorial control of CBS News by buying it — the same goal achieved four decades later through the Skydance sale. - **1986** — Financier **Laurence Tisch** takes a controlling stake in CBS and imposes deep newsroom budget cuts, ending the Paley-era culture of news as a prestige loss-leader. - **1995** — Tisch sells CBS to **Westinghouse Electric** for $5.4 billion. Westinghouse adopts the CBS name and pivots from an industrial conglomerate to a broadcasting company. **Leslie Moonves** ("[[Les Moonves]]") is named president of CBS Entertainment in 1995 and CEO of CBS Television in 1998. ## Era 5 — Viacom, the Split, and the Moonves Empire (2000–2017) - **May 2000** — **[[Viacom]]**, controlled by **[[Sumner Redstone]]** through **[[National Amusements]]**, completes its ~$37 billion merger with CBS — at the time the largest media merger ever. CBS is now part of the Paramount/MTV/Nickelodeon empire. - **December 31, 2005** — Redstone **splits the company**: CBS Corporation (broadcast, Showtime, Simon & Schuster) separates from [[Viacom]] (Paramount Pictures, MTV, BET). [[Les Moonves]] runs CBS Corporation, building it into a ratings powerhouse. - **September 2004** — The *60 Minutes II* "Killian documents" story on George W. Bush's National Guard service collapses over unverifiable sources; **Dan Rather** leaves the anchor chair in 2005. The episode ("Rathergate") becomes a permanent right-wing talking point about CBS News bias. - **2014** — **[[Scott Pelley]]**, **[[Norah O'Donnell]]**, and a new generation anchor CBS's broadcasts as the network competes in the cable age. ## Era 6 — Moonves Falls, the Redstones Reunite (2018–2024) - **September 9, 2018** — **[[Les Moonves]] is forced out** as CBS chairman and CEO amid multiple sexual-misconduct allegations reported during the #MeToo era; he forfeits a ~$120 million severance. His ouster ends his resistance to a Viacom remerger and hands the initiative to **[[Shari Redstone]]**. - **August 13, 2019** — CBS and Viacom announce they will **recombine as ViacomCBS**, with [[Shari Redstone]] as chair; the merger closes that December. - **February 2022** — ViacomCBS rebrands as **[[Paramount Global]]**, with CBS News folded into a company betting its future on **Paramount+** streaming. - **2024** — With streaming losses mounting, [[Shari Redstone]] moves to sell [[National Amusements]]' controlling stake — putting CBS, the network Paley built, on the auction block. ## Era 7 — The Trump Suit and the Skydance Sale (Late 2024–August 2025) - **Late 2024** — **[[Donald Trump]] sues CBS for $10 billion** over a *60 Minutes* interview with Kamala Harris, alleging the editing was deceptive. The suit is widely regarded as legally meritless, but it hangs over the pending Skydance merger because the Trump-appointed **[[FCC]]** must approve transfer of CBS's broadcast licenses. - **April 2025** — *60 Minutes* executive producer **[[Bill Owens]]** resigns, saying he has lost the independence to run the broadcast as it always had been. On air, **[[Scott Pelley]]** tells viewers that corporate had begun "supervising" their work and that Owens "felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires." - **July 2025** — Paramount **settles the Trump suit for $16 million**, paid toward the [[Donald J. Trump Presidential Library]] — read across the press as a payment to clear the [[FCC]]'s approval, an instance of [[Regulatory Capture]] and [[Media Capture]]. Approval conditions include an "ombudsman" over CBS News (filled by **[[Hudson Institute]]**'s Kenneth Weinstein), elimination of all [[DEI]] programs, and PSAs. - **July 24 – August 7, 2025** — The [[FCC]] approves the merger; it closes. CBS is now owned by **[[Skydance-Paramount]]** under **[[David Ellison]]**. ## Era 8 — The Weiss Era and the Capture of CBS News (Oct 2025–2026) - **October 2025** — Paramount Skydance acquires **[[The Free Press]]** for ~$150 million and installs founder **[[Bari Weiss]]** as **editor-in-chief of CBS News** — a figure known for anti-establishment media critique, with no broadcast-news management experience, atop the network of Murrow and Cronkite. Veteran journalists begin resigning, citing loss of editorial independence. - **November 2025** — In a [[Donald Trump]] interview, Trump tells CBS not to air an exchange about his pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — **and CBS complies**, deleting it from broadcast and online. **[[Jamie Raskin]]** opens a formal investigation into the editorial capitulation. - **December 2025** — Weiss **pulls a *60 Minutes* segment** on Trump deportees sent to El Salvador's CECOT prison after Trump officials decline to participate. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi: "Pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one." - **May–June 2026** — Weiss replaces *60 Minutes* EP Tanya Simon with **[[Nick Bilton]]** (no TV-production background) and fires correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. On **June 2, 2026**, CBS **fires [[Scott Pelley]]** — one day after he accused Weiss of "murdering the show" and said he had been told to "inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story." See **[[Scott Pelley Firing]]**. - **2025–2026** — **[[Stephen Colbert]]** clashes publicly with the new management over *The Late Show*'s editorial direction, a parallel front in the realignment of CBS's most prominent Trump-critical voices. - **June 12, 2026** — The **Department of Justice clears** Paramount Skydance's ~$111B acquisition of **[[Warner Bros. Discovery]]**, which would put **CBS News and [[CNN]] under common ownership** — extending the capture story from one legacy newsroom to two. See [[Paramount Timeline]]. --- ## Why This Matters — RWKB Significance CBS is the KB's clearest demonstration that the institutions of the free press can be neutralized through ownership rather than law. **From Murrow to capitulation.** The same network whose 1954 [[Edward R. Murrow]] broadcast is taught as the model of journalism confronting state power deleted a presidential interview exchange at the President's request in 2025 and fired its lead anchor for objecting in 2026. The distance between those two events — measured on one timeline — is the distance the American free press traveled under concentrated, politically aligned ownership. **[[Media Capture]] is the mechanism.** No censorship statute was passed. The chain ran through a merger approval the [[FCC]] controlled, a lawsuit settlement that functioned as a payment, and an owner who traded editorial independence for regulatory clearance. The [[Scott Pelley Firing]] is the visible endpoint of an invisible transaction. **The conservative-takeover dream, realized.** Jesse Helms's 1985 "become Dan Rather's boss" campaign to seize CBS News failed because it tried to buy the network outright in public. The Skydance sale succeeded because it arrived as a routine financial transaction — revealing that the most durable way to capture a newsroom is to buy its parent company. **[[Media Consolidation]] compounds the risk.** The pending [[Warner Bros. Discovery]] deal would place CBS News and [[CNN]] under one owner — the [[Manufacturing Consent]] concern at industrial scale, and the reason both the [[Antitrust]] and the press-freedom arguments now point at the same company. --- ## See Also - [[Paramount Timeline]] — the corporate parent and the deal mechanics - [[Fox News Timeline]] — the partisan-media model CBS's critics fear it is approaching - [[Netflix Timeline]] — the streaming-wars context behind Paramount's sale - [[Right-Wing Media Timeline]] — the ecosystem realignment CBS now feeds - [[Scott Pelley Firing]] — the flashpoint event - [[60 Minutes]] / [[CBS News]] / [[The Free Press]] — the institutions involved - [[Bari Weiss]] / [[Scott Pelley]] / [[Nick Bilton]] — the principals - [[Media Capture]] / [[Media Consolidation]] / [[Corporate Capture]] — the structural concepts - [[Manufacturing Consent]] — the media-theory lens