Carr’s Collision Course
On Wednesday morning at 10 a.m ET, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr will take a seat before the Senate Commerce Committee for a rare appearance before Congress. Carr won’t be alone. Commissioners Olivia Trusty and Anna Gomez will join him, marking the first Senate Commerce oversight hearing with all FCC commissioners present in more than five years—a notable moment for an agency that has largely not been subjected to tough congressional scrutiny.
The hearing was convened by Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who chairs the committee. But while Cruz is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, there are reasons to believe this won’t be a friendly affair for Carr. Just months ago, Cruz publicly rebuked Carr for threatening stations that aired “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” warning that conservatives would come to “regret” backing an FCC chair willing to weaponize the office to suppress speech.
“That’s right out of ‘Goodfellas,’” Cruz said at the time on his podcast. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”
Cruz did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday, nor did Carr. But the matter is expected to loom over the hearing. Indeed, according to a copy of prepared remarks obtained by Status, Gomez is poised to…
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CBS News Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss and Erika Kirk. (Screen grab via Snapstream/CBS)
Weiss’ Town Hall Wipeout: Bari Weiss continues to struggle to draw a large television audience as CBS News’ new top editor. Her much-hyped Saturday evening town hall with Erika Kirk failed to strike ratings gold with the network’s audience, averaging 1.9 million viewers—despite a big lead-in from the Army-Navy game, which drew an average of 7.3 million viewers, though it slid to 3.5 million in the post-game show. (If any demographic is going to watch a Kirk town hall, wouldn’t the red-blooded Army-Navy audience be it?) In any event, while the ratings represented a 63% jump from the weekend before, year to date, the Kirk town hall was down 11% for the time slot in total viewers, and 41% in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic, despite the almost non-stop promotion from CBS News.
► It wasn’t just on linear where the Kirk town hall flopped. On YouTube, despite CBS News having 7 million subscribers, video of the event only drew about 175K views.
- Status Scoop | Business Insider in recent weeks increased the volume of advertisements on its website, according to people familiar with the matter. The ad cadence on story pages…
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