It’s just that her appeal is becoming more selective
By 
Sure, Bari Weiss’s interview with whatshername seemed like a charisma-free void. But perhaps it had a mass appeal people with taste cannot understand? Turns out, no:
Newly-minted CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss saw the network’s ratings decline for her first town hall special with Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The special, which aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, averaged 1.5 million viewers — a whopping 20% decline in viewers compared to the year-to-date average for the hour, which previously was airing a third hour of “48 Hours,” according to preliminary Nielsen ratings data released Tuesday.
For the all-important 25- to 54-year demographic, ratings tanked 44% to 237,000, the agency said.
Those numbers rose to 1.9 million with 265,000 viewers in the all-important 25- to 54-year demographic, according to final numbers from Nielsen, which combined data from broadcasters, networks and streamers.
The Erika Kirk sitdown dipped 10% in total viewership compared to the network’s standard programming in that time slot year to date – and was down 41 % in the key demo, according to The Independent, which cited Nielsen’s final ratings.
On YouTube, Weiss’ hour-long sitdown with Kirk amassed just 109,000 views as of Tuesday evening.
109,000 views LOL. That’s less than such non-niche and broadly appealing topics as, say, this breakdown of the Quinn Hughes trade. And the ratings are even more embarrassing when you consider that 1)CBS News turned its social media into full-time hard sells for this thing, and 2)it had the lead-in of the Army/Navy game.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Weiss is often described as a “contrarian,” which couldn’t be further from the truth. Her one salient skill is in telling very rich people what they want to hear. and nothing that they don’t. And she’s good at it:
In December 2022, Weiss got a text from Elon Musk. The new owner of Twitter asked if she was interested in viewing internal documents that later came to be known as the “Twitter files.” The much-hyped reports did not quite succeed in showing how the social-media company had been captured by woke interests, but Weiss correctly anticipated that they would get a lot of attention and moved up the launch of the Free Press to coincide with the reporting. The outlet introduced itself as committed to liberal principles of free speech and open inquiry that had been abandoned by the mainstream press: “You won’t agree with everything you read or hear from the Free Press. And we think that’s exactly the point.”
It immediately became apparent that readers were eager for what Weiss was selling, even if the content often strayed into defenses of illiberal causes and positions. “She commissioned pieces and wrote pieces herself that clearly resonated,” said former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim, an early adviser. “If that point of view was readily available elsewhere, nobody would have paid any attention. She obviously identified a real space in the market.”
The Free Press also generated a positive-feedback loop among Weiss’s network of wealthy supporters, magnifying her reach and influence. “The unifying ideology of the Free Press is that it’s all things a rich person would agree with,” said a New York–based media operator. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, who met Weiss at a dinner party held by former agent and super-connector Michael Kives, told her he liked her podcast series The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling. At an event at Grazer’s house, Katy Perry told Weiss she was a reader. “Her intended appeal was to not just be a mouthpiece for the elites of the East and West Coast but, at the end of the day, the Masters of the Universe — that’s whose support actually spreads things,” said a former adviser to the company.
Saying nothing but “all the things a rich person would agree with” is a great way of getting paid and getting status, but it’s not a promising basis for producing content that anyone who isn’t a vacant Silicon Valley mogul or fading pop star wants to watch.