Gayle King’s time as the host of CBS Mornings may soon come to an end amid a “bloodbath” at the network, as its contends with “brutal” budget cuts, a $20 billion lawsuit from President Donald Trump and a looming $8.4 billion merger involving parent company Paramount and Skydance Media.
Sources have told both the New York Post and the Daily Mail that it will be difficult for King to justify her $10 million annual salary, given that “CBS Mornings” continues to struggle in the ratings behind NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America.” As previously reported by The Post, King’s annual compensation got cut last year from $13 million when she signed a new one-year deal, which is up in September.
With the network in crisis, morale has plummeted on its evening and morning news shows. Resentment also has grown towards King, especially after she joined Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez in a heavily touted, 11-minute ride aboard one of billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space rockets, the Daily Mail reported.
“People don’t want to say it out loud in the office but the entire space debacle really hurt us,” a staffer at “60 Minutes” told the Daily Mail. “Gayle being part of that is not a good look for our brand.”
It’s true that CBS Mornings’ coverage of the April 14 space ride gave the show a rare first-place ratings finish. But King’s participation also became a source of controversy over questions of whether the self-styled “journalist” had violated network’s own code of ethics by accepting a freebie from a billionaire who is trying to curry favor with Trump. King, Perry and Sanchez also were mocked for calling themselves “astronauts” and “crew” members, as they claimed they were making a “historic” statement about female empowerment because the passengers were all women.
King, in particular, was ridiculed for displaying celebrity cluelessness and hubris by insisting that the media call their ride a “flight.”
“I really resent that people are calling it a ride,” King said when confronted by a TMZ reported outside CBS’s Manhattan studios the day after the Blue Origin spectacle.
King also bristled at the notion that the ride was a “P.R. stunt.” She argued that it had an important scientific component for the future of space exploration and likened it to the truly historic 1961 flight taken by original Mercury 7 astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American in space.
Like many in the public, others at CBS thought differently of the Blue Origin situation. “I think a lot of people resent Gayle for that. I know I do,” the “60 Minutes” staffer said. There was “a general sense of embarrassment,” a CBS producer told the Daily Mail. “I almost feel like apologizing when I tell people where I work. I hate it here,” the producer also said.
A former TV news reporter who once worked for her good friend Oprah Winfrey, King started co-anchoring “CBS Mornings” in 2012, alongside Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell.
But CBS is in upheaval for many more reasons than King’s Blue Origin spectacle. Paramount is trying to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump against CBS News’s legendary “60 Minutes” investigative news show. Trump claims that the show’s interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October was deceitfully edited to make her sound better. The company has denied the allegations, and legal experts say Paramount could prevail in the lawsuit, The Guardian reported.
But Paramount reportedly wants to settle the case as it pursues a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance. More upheaval came Monday when CBS News boss Wendy McMahon stepped down from her job, having voiced her opposition to Paramount setting the lawsuit, as the New York Post reported.
“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon said in a memo. But McMahon also was faulted for her controversial efforts to overhaul the evening news, while ratings for King’s show remain “abysmal,” the New York Post said.
With everything going on at CBS, King’s future is not the biggest priority even though she is one of the network’s marquee stars. But the New York Post reported that she must know it would be “a miracle” for her to score another big, one-year deal, especially if Skydance is in charge. For that reason, King is exploring her options, with another source telling the New York Post: “Gayle sees the writing on the wall.”
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