CBS Corporation announced Sunday night that chairman and CEO Les Moonves will depart the company, amid reporting from Ronan Farrow about sexual assault and harassment claims against the long-tenured executive.
Moonves’s most infamous dabbling in politics the last few years was his highly publicized comment in February 2016 that the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump was “good” for business.
Not that the CBS executive chairman and CEO might vote for the Republican presidential frontrunner, but he likes the ad money Trump and his competitors are bringing to the network.
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race.
Moonves called the campaign for president a “circus” full of “bomb throwing,” and he hopes it continues.
“Most of the ads are not about issues. They’re sort of like the debates,” he said.
“Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? … The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said.
Given the long-held narrative among Trump critics that media overexposure was to credit for his rise in the polls, Moonves’s comment was fodder for rival candidates. It’s a wonder that it took Moonves such a long time to clarify or at least elaborate on his remarks, given their potency and his standing as a media boss for a mainstream network: He said in October 2016—just a couple of weeks before Election Day—that the original statement he made nearly eight months prior was intended as a “joke.”
Politico reported at the time:
“It was a joke! It was a joke!” Moonves said. “Then Marco Rubio put me on a flyer and said this is why the media is supporting Donald Trump. Obviously, Trump is saying something very different today.”
Moonves said that the comment needed to be put into proper context. His answer was in response to a question about local political ad spending, not TV ratings.
But that was hardly a defense. “If it bleeds, it leads,” the timeworn axiom of television news, may be a macabre way to justify ratings. But Moonves was justifying Trump merely as a business asset—not necessarily one who would get more eyeballs on 60 Minutes, since revenue drivers can take many forms.
As the Hollywood Reporter quoted Moonves saying in February 2016, “There’s a lot of money in the marketplace.” If that was an observation about how beneficial the then-candidate was for the advertising portion of operations, then so be it. In any case, he was discussing Trump—and, more broadly, presidential politics—in the context of being a money-maker.
And whether it’s ratings, campaign ads, or something else, framing the political process as a boon for TV revenue is part of how politics has gone off the rails in the first place—even if it’s a television exec’s job in these crazy times.
