- Fox News on Monday said that Barry-John “Baz” Davies, a London-based producer, passed away over the weekend after a long illness. Davies, 46, had been with Fox News since 2010, beginning his stint with the network as an editor and later becoming a producer. “Throughout his tenure, he covered some of the most consequential foreign news of the last two decades,” wrote Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott. Davies is survived by his wife, Sarah, and his two sons, Rex (5) and Noah (3).
- CNN is planning special coverage on Tuesday night for New York’s 3rd congressional district’s special election to replace former Rep. George Santos. CNN Special Election Night begins at 8 p.m. ET and will be led by Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper. Dana Bash, Kasie Hunt, Manu Raju, Audie Cornish, Kaitlan Collins, Abby Phillip and David Chalian will join them in providing analysis. John King will be at the Magic Wall, while John Berman and Shimon Prokupecz will be reporting from polling locations in the district. Miguel Marquez and Lauren Fox will be at campaign headquarters. Melanie Zanona will report from Capitol Hill, MJ Lee will have the latest from the White House and Kristen Holmes will provide updates from the presidential campaign trail.
- CNN has also announced the promotions of Natasha Bertrand and Paul Murphy. Bertrand becomes a CNN correspondent covering national security. Based in Washington, D.C., she will continue to focus on national security and politics across CNN platforms. Meanwhile, Murphy has been promoted to reporter. He will continue to cover the intersection of breaking news, open-source intelligence reporting (OSINT), satellite imaging and public records reporting. Murphy is based in New York City.
- BBC News has announced that Chris Achilleos will be the news organization’s executive news editor for streaming. In this new role, Achilleos will play a key part in the BBC’s digital transformation plans as it grows streaming on BBC iPlayer, BBC News live pages and on bbc.com. He will lead three teams focused on single-story live streams, curation and amplification of the most important moments in broadcast and development of new streaming-first formats. Achilleos comes to BBC from ITV News, where he was the head of ITVX, the broadcaster’s streaming news service.
- The just concluded Super Bowl LVIII broke viewership records as it was watched by an average of 123.7 million viewers across all CBS platforms, with CBS alone averaging 120.3 million viewers, making it the largest single audience on record. The numbers blew past Fox’s previous Super Bowl record of more than 115 million average viewers. This year’s Super Bowl will be the most-watched U.S. telecast since the Apollo moon landing of 1969, which had an audience of 125 – 150 million viewers. One person who was very busy during this Super Bowl weekend was Nate Burleson, who was part of CBS Sports pre-game, halftime and post-game coverage; he was in the booth as an analyst for Nickelodeon’s alternative telecast of the game and still had to attend to his weekday CBS Mornings duties on Monday.
- Hours after announcing its boffo Super Bowl numbers, Paramount, the parent of CBS Sports and CBS News, announced that it will have significant layoffs. About 800 employees, or 3% of its 24,500 workforce, will be cut in this latest round of layoffs. One of the smaller media conglomerates currently in operation, Paramount Global is reportedly involved in take-over talks as it faces an uncertain future. In an internal memo to employees, CEO Bob Bakish said, “While I realize these changes are in no way easy, as I said last month, I am confident this is the right decision for our future.” The layoffs have already started to affect CBS News, according to people familiar with the situation.
CBS News is being hit with layoffs today, according to people familiar. Roughly 20 people including some in its D.C. bureau.
— Isabella Simonetti (@thesimonetti) February 13, 2024
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