CBS Retains Law Firm to Probe Misconduct Claims at TV Stations

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThis Saturday-morning news show is supposed to look like the ones that precede it Monday through Friday. It doesn’t.Co-anchor Jeff Glor isn’t wearing a tie and his colleagues, Michelle Miller and Dana Jacobson, often join him in a weekend outing that seems cut from different cloth than the weekday version to which it is tied.

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who took office in December, has weighed in on the alleged pervasive culture of racial discrimination and sexual misconduct against workers at legendary West Hollywood industry hangout the Chateau Marmont. The claims first surfaced in a September 2020 investigation in The Hollywood Reporter.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorAttorneys for Fox News filed individual motions Thursday night to dismiss Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit on behalf of Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, three anchors who have been named in the matter in which the voting technology company is seeking a whopping $2.7 billion.The three motions were filed by Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm representing Fox News in the matter.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorFox Business Network is poised to cancel Lou Dobbs’ long-running program, the latest in a series of programming changes taking place at Fox News Media, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times.A spokesperson for Fox News Media could not be reached for immediate comment.Dobbs is one of three Fox News personalities who has been sued along with the Fox Corporation unit by Smartmatic, the voting technology company that has levied a $2.7 billion defamation

Michelle Williams has signed on to play Peggy Lee in a biopic for the legendary singer, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. The biopic will be directed by Todd Haynes.

Michelle Williams is playing Peggy Lee!

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorSmartmatic, a maker of voting technology whose name has been the subject of disparaging commentary from a handful of conservative-news outlets, on Thursday said it had sued Fox News and three of its popular on-air personalities — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro — for more than $2.7 billion, citing efforts made on Fox News programs to disparage the company’s business.Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, two attorneys who had been working for President

The only thing predictable about the Golden Globe nominations are their unpredictability. And the Hollywood Foreign Press Association went overboard with the chaos in this very strange year in which the nominations were announced before the eligibility period was even up (that happens on Feb.

This is something you’ve been working on for quite a while, isn’t it? I don’t know if I’ve been working on it, but I wrote it 27 or 28 years ago, and it almost got made several times. At first other people were going to direct it, but when I started directing in earnest around 2000, (producer) Mark (Johnson) would ask me about it every couple of years.

Andra Day gained fame as a singer thanks to her hit anthem “Rise Up”, but she’ll soon be seen making her acting debut in the role of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday in the Lee Daniels-directed biopic “The United States vs. Billie Holiday”.

This past September, dozens of Chateau Marmont employees broke the hospitality industry’s code of silence. They alleged to The Hollywood Reporter that the landmark hotel, a fabled industry hangout, is rife with racial discrimination and sexual misconduct, perpetuated by complicit management and ownership.

Jason Scott Lee has signed on to star in Disney+’s Doogie Howser reboot.

EXCLUSIVE: Jason Scott Lee (Mulan) is set as a lead opposite Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Kathleen Rose Perkins in Disney+’s upcoming comedy series Doogie Kameāloha, M.D..

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorEven in tough times, advertisers still want a Super Bowl.CBS is “virtually sold out” of all its commercial inventory for Super Bowl LIV, according to a spokesperson for parent company ViacomCBS, a sign that Madison Avenue remains interested in the Big Game despite some of the rockier economic conditions surrounding it.The network has been seeking around $5.5M for a 30 second in-game spot and has been grappling with decisions by some stalwart sponsors to bench

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorTwo of CBS’s two top local-TV executives were placed on administrative leave Monday night after the Los Angeles Times raised issues about their conduct over the weekend in a two-part report that examined their treatment of people of color at specific TV stations, among other allegations.Peter Dunn, president of the CBS Television Stations, and David Friend, senior vice president of news for the stations were placed on the leave “pending the results of a

On Sunday, iconic filmmaker Spike Lee was honored by the New York Film Critics Circle with a special award for his short New York New York, which was filmed during the pandemic. After fellow filmmaker Martin Scorsese presented him with the award, Lee did not mince words during his acceptance speech which was pre-recorded on January 6, the day when Donald Trump supporters invaded the Capitol.

John Lee Hancock’s hunt for a serial killer script The Little Things drew a killer cast of Oscar winners Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto. In Deadline’s Contenders Film panel for the Warner Bros drama that premieres January 29, Hancock explains why it took nearly 30 years to make a movie he wrote when he had just completed the Clint Eastwood-directed Kevin Costner-starrer A Perfect World — ostensibly for Eastwood to direct it.