What, uh, does this mean, uh, for 60 Minutes and CBS News? How rare is it to see this spill out the way it's happening over the last forty-eight hours?

Well, you know, you look at, at the history of mergers, take Time Warner when AOL acquired it, and AOL comes in and they say, "You guys are... suck.

You're, you're Luddites." You know, this and all, and alienates all the Time Warner people.

Something similar's happened right here.

The, the people from Paramount are coming in, Shari Weiss coming in and saying, "You guys suck.

You're Luddites.

We have to make changes." Now, you do have to.

So him saying this doesn't read to me, what do you think, as just a-a-another, um, employment dispute.

And is that fundamentally different than what a great editor-in-chief would have done fifty years ago, where the editor-in-chief, the judgment about, "Hey, is this a story that's gonna be compelling to our audience?" Is that fundamentally different now, just because you know so much more about which articles are really stirring the pot and which aren't and which people read and which they share and, and so forth?

Well, now you have evidence, not instinct or gut.

And fifty years ago, you may have done the same thing.

You may have sought to placate your readers or viewers, uh, and, and certainly they did oftentimes.

But you didn't have the, the ability to measure and know with certitude what the reader or viewer wanted.

And, and so when you go in, if you're a reporter at, say, CBS News, and you say, "Hey, our, our people are, you know-- We ought to tell them more about what's going on in Africa." And, and, and, and the person says, "But wait a second.

I-- Our African stories get no viewership.

I should have said the thing that everybody wanted to hear."