Lifestyle
L.A.'s gone all in on hyper-specific bumper stickers — the weirder the better
Jeanne Vaccaro, a scholar and curator from Kansas, always wanted to become a bumper sticker person. For years, she collected stickers from artists, musicians and bookstores, but she kept them away from her vehicle, afraid that they’d damage the paint.
“It’s like a tattoo,” Vaccaro told me in Echo Park this past December. “Your mom tells you not to. It’ll, quote, ruin my car, unquote.”
But when she saw a scratch on her newly-purchased silver 2020 Subaru Impreza, she decided to cover the blemish with a sticker that said “All I want for my Bat Mitzvah is a Free Palestine,” the last two words large and bubbly, and filled with green and red to emphasize its political message.
It opened the floodgates. Now she has more than 25 stickers on the rear. There’s so many, they wrap around the sides, blasting colorful messages above the tires.
Jeanne Vaccaro.
(Renée Reizman)
“Next came, ‘HONK IF YOU LOVE RELATIONAL AESTHETICS,’” said Vaccaro, who was dressed in a Betty Boop T-shirt and leopard print jeans the day we met. She gestured to a simple, black-and-white sticker in sans-serif font that reads “I’D RATHER BE CRYING TO ENYA.”
The collection has since become quite varied. It includes a red-and-white bumper sticker that declares “I’d rather be withholding my labor,” which was designed by a poetry small press called Spiral Editions. (It’s technically a replacement; the first one was stolen from her car.) Her favorite is “Keep Honking! I’m thinking about the incomparable pool scene from Paul Verhoeven’s underappreciated 1995 erotic drama ‘Showgirls,’” a black sticker with white text that features lead actress Elizabeth Berkley’s lean profile.
“But I just have so many more that I can’t fit,” she said.
In August, Vaccaro took a sabbatical from the University of Kansas to curate the exhibition “Scientia Sexualis” at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In the brief time she spent in the area’s Arts District, her vehicle became a local celebrity.
“I’ve had a lot of people send me photos from Instagram,” she said. “Friends of theirs saw my car, and people know that it’s me. I think that’s so special.”
Though some of her stickers are political, Vaccaro doesn’t believe her car ruffles any feathers.
“I have not experienced any road rage or anger, and I’ve driven across the country many times,” Vaccaro said. Instead, she notices people through her rearview mirror, smiling. “It makes me happy that my car is bringing joy to the world.”
It’s hard to drive anywhere in L.A. right now without seeing an irreverent bumper sticker. In my own neighborhood of Echo Park, there’s “My other car is a Spirit Halloween,” which incorporates the brand’s grim reaper mascot; “Let me merge, my dad is dead” on a contradictory glittery, bubblegum pink background; and “KEEP HONKING! I’m Sitting In My Car Crying To The Cranberries 1993 Hit Single, ‘LINGER’” in a smattering of different-sized fonts.
Mara Herbkersman and Emily Bielagus, co-founders of the lesbian bar, The Ruby Fruit, sell branded bumper stickers that read: “keep honking. i’m listening to THE INDIGO GIRLS” for $5 each online. (Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
Cars have been emblazoned with advertisements and political messages ever since they came on the market, but the first adhesive bumper sticker can be traced back to 1946, when Forest P. Gill combined two wartime inventions, sticky paper and fluorescent paint. The first message Gill used for his discovery is lost to time, but his invention had sticking power. Political organizers were enthusiastic early adopters, and in 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential campaign became the first to embrace the art form. His supporters proclaimed “I LIKE IKE” on the back of their Cadillacs.
Bumper stickers quickly became a permanent fixture in popular culture. Over the last 80 years, Gill’s company would churn out millions of stickers for politicians and tourist traps. They often communicate personal ideology, ranging from a hippie’s transmission of peace and love to a veteran’s pride for his country. Or taste: In the 1970s, classical music die-hards in L.A. adorned their cars with the phrase “MAHLER GROOVES,” to show appreciation for the Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer and conductor Gustav Mahler. (Which the Los Angeles Philharmonic recreated this year to promote a Mahler-themed festival this winter.)
In 1991, a Supreme Court case, Cunningham vs. State, ruled that bumper stickers were protected under the 1st Amendment, which made cars one of the few places where people could widely, but semi-anonymously, make bold political statements.
Claire L. Evans of Yacht.
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
In recent years, the creation of colorful, highly-specific bumper stickers have exploded, especially in the car culture capital of Los Angeles. At between $5 to $10 a pop, they’re an economical tool to communicate personal values. This new wave of stickers, however, is more concerned with cracking self-deprecating jokes or aligning with a niche fandom. There’s a bumper sticker for everybody. You can profess your love for John Cage, neon art or frogs. You can declare your other car is a poem, ask drivers not to stress out your dog or claim to be a silly goose.
“It used to be about expressing something universal,” says Claire Evans, an artist, writer and musician most known for being half of the synth-pop duo Yacht. “Now it seems to be a signal of one’s membership in a niche musical, artistic or internet subculture.”
Evans has been documenting bumper stickers in Los Angeles for years, and has built a reputation as a bumper sticker expert and connoisseur. In an attempt to innovate upon the artform, Evans even designed a suite of miniature stickers for phone cases.
Many of today’s amusing slogans play off classic formulas like “Keep honking, I’m [oblivious to the world because I’m listening to something obscure], or “Honk if you love [a quirky interest or interesting activity] or “I’d rather be [bleak statement confronting one’s mortality] or “My other ride is a [creative vehicle alternative].”
The familiar templates allow people to endlessly iterate upon the genre and invite a conversation on any topic. Creators start with a broad concept, then fine-tune every word within the sentence, dialing in the message until it’s personalized to their unique taste. Local businesses, like Silverlake lesbian bar The Ruby Fruit, have printed their own iterations to cater to their clientele. (Theirs, which sells for $5 online, reads: “keep honking, i’m listening to THE INDIGO GIRLS.”)
Claire L. Evans’ bumper stickers.
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
“You want to put a sticker on your car that’s so obscure that whoever finds it funny is destined to be your friend,” Evans said.
Perhaps no bumper sticker accomplishes what Evans describes better than, “Keep Honking! I’m Listening to Alice Coltrane’s 1971 Meteoric Sensation ‘Universal Consciousness.’” The yellow and black declaration designed by Echo Park-based artist Christopher DeLoach in 2020, arguably kicked off the current trend of esoteric car accessories.
DeLoach came up with the Coltrane sticker while working at Texino, a tech startup that sold luxury camper vans. The company asked him to make merchandise that would suit the vehicles, and he naturally gravitated towards bumper stickers. The design — simple Arial black text on a yellow background that changes size and position in different parts of the phrase — was inspired by a vintage pro-life bumper sticker a friend found from a small church in Mississippi.
The feedback DeLoach received on the bumper sticker, as he puts it, was: “No one is going to understand this.” So DeLoach decided to sell it through his social media under the moniker “thatscoolthankyou.” It took off in 2021 and he estimates that he has since sold at least 3,000 of the Coltrane stickers, and has given away thousands more for free.
Artist Christopher DeLoach in his studio in Echo Park.
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
When I met DeLoach at his garage studio in Echo Park, he was sitting behind a retro Steelcase desk in a gray diamond-patterned blazer and black, collared shirt. In front of him were a stack of pre-addressed manila envelopes full of stickers that would soon be shipped off to people around the U.S. Also on the desk was a framed photo of a young DeLoach, who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., posing with New York City’s former mayor, the infamous Rudy Giuliani. In front of the portrait, a nameplate read “Christopher DeLoach. Bumper Sticker Magnate.”
Despite the humorous tone of his creations, DeLoach has a surprisingly dark explanation for his bumper stickers’ success.
“The grave reality is that, in America, we exist in the most propagandized civilization of all time,” DeLoach said. “Everywhere you look, there’s branding and advertising. It has the secondary or tertiary effect of causing people to then want to act out and propagandize themselves.”
Since the success of the Coltrane sticker, DeLoach has come up with more than 120 designs. They appeal to every type of fandom, from followers of mega stars like Taylor Swift to devotees of the shoegaze pioneers Cocteau Twins. His second-most popular sticker is another one I spot regularly in bar bathrooms: a spoof of the famous interfaith “Coexist” bumper sticker of the mid-aughts. In DeLoach’s version, the religious symbols spell out “Cointelpro,” which refers to a covert operation led by the FBI to undermine radical political organizations.
There’s seemingly a sticker for everybody. But if you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s easy to design your own. When Catalina Elias, an engineer living in Wrightwood, Calif., couldn’t find any stickers dedicated to flugelhorn player Chuck Mangione, she hopped onto Canva and made one that says, “Go ahead, keep honkin! I’m listening to Chuck Mangione’s 1977 hit ‘Feels So Good.’ ”
Catalina Ellis, of Wrightwood, CA, designed the bumper sticker that says “Go ahead, keep honkin! I’m listening to Chuck Mangione’s 1977 hit Feels So Good.”
(Catalina Ellis)
Though they’ve never met, Elias’s phrasing was inspired by DeLoach’s Coltrane sticker, which she had seen on Instagram.
Elias ordered 75 stickers, hoping she’d sell them, but never got around to it. Instead, she started giving them away for free. One day, she was hosting a yard sale and playing the song on repeat. It caught a neighbor’s attention.
“Some guy rode by with a really cool bike, and we gave him a bumper sticker, and now he’s one of our best friends,” she said.
The stickers also helped psychotherapist Jack Lam build camaraderie. Like Vaccaro, Lam put their “Honk if you’re a silly goose” sticker on their Toyota Prius to hide a scratch, but it’s also sentimental. A friend gave them the sticker because they knew they loved waterfowl.
For Christmas, Lam bought stickers as gifts for their group of friends, choosing phrases that best fit everyone’s unique personality.
“It’s whimsical and cute,” Lam said. “Now we all have a sticker, which is kind of beautiful.”
In a city that frequently isolates people into their car-shaped boxes, Evans believes that spying a relatable sticker can remind people of their shared humanity.
(Chiara Alexa / For The Times)
“Sometimes this hyper specific bumper sticker is a way of reaching across the highway and making a connection with another person.”
Do you have a favorite bumper sticker? Share it here.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
On a 75-mile cliff-hugging stretch of highway in California, traffic is way up, despite soaring gas prices. And locals expect the busiest summer in years.
The road is Highway 1 in Big Sur, which reopened in January after three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides. Drivers can once again embark on the state’s most famous road trip, covering the 100 miles between Cambria to the south and Carmel to the north without leaving the two-lane coastal highway. And they’re heading out in big numbers.
Caltrans estimates that as of May, Big Sur restaurant and retailer guest counts are up 40% from last year, and that northbound traffic at Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen 900% year-over-year.
People pose for photos near Bixby Bridge. Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking around the bridge.
Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.
“Take your time,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the popular Nepenthe restaurant and president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, offering advice to travelers. “You’re going to be sharing the road with a number of people.”
As travelers rediscover the road, the cost of driving has been shooting skyward. California’s average gas price ($6.11 per gallon as of May 26) is up 26% from the year before. In early April, rates hit $9.99 at the isolated gas station in the Big Sur community of Gorda.
For spring and summer travelers, these numbers would seem to pose a stark question: Stay home and save money, or head for the coast because the road is finally open and it’s still cheaper than flying?
So far, the latter answer is winning big.
Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.
“We are definitely seeing a huge uptick in our reservations,” said Megan Handy, assistant general manager at the upscale Treebones resort. She estimated that bookings are 30% or more ahead of last year, and rates are unchanged since then. But “it’s still not feeling super crowded, which is nice. Everything still feels kind of calm.”
But added traffic has raised some anxiety. On May 19, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking at Bixby Bridge, one of the region’s top photo spots.
Over the years, the number of cars parking near the bridge — often illegally, sometimes impeding emergency vehicles — has risen. The proposed parking moratorium won’t take effect until the supervisors discuss it further.
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Busy as things are, several business owners pointed out that many international travelers have not yet returned — perhaps because most make their plans more than six months ahead, perhaps because of global politics, perhaps a little of each.
The biggest challenge for businesses during this resurgence? “Restaffing and retaining,” said Handy at Treetops.
At Nepenthe, Gafill said his business has seen a 45% boost in guest volume since the road’s reopening. Gafill said he would have expected a 35% pickup, “simply by virtue of reopening the highway.” The additional 10%, he said, might be “all that pent-up demand,” aided by “a very beautiful and very dry winter,” followed by a mild spring.
A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.
Another possible factor: Nobody can be sure how long the road will remain open.
To cope with the influx of people, Gafill said, “everybody is trying to recruit and retain their existing staff.”
At the Ragged Point Inn, where rates dropped as low as $149 nightly last fall, rates are back over $200 and staffers are suggesting that customers book at least six months ahead. The inn has reopened its snack bar for the first time since early 2023, and management is investing in capital upgrades and staging live music on weekends throughout the summer.
Business “is up over 100%,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I know not all of our neighbors are having the same lift, but everybody is doing better.”
Traffic approaching Bixby Bridge.
A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.
Even at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery above Lucia, the road’s reopening and coming summer season have made a difference. Bookings are up an estimated 30% at the hermitage, which rent rooms and cottages (for two nights or more) to visitors who agree to its requirement of silence.
Big Sur business owners advise visitors to travel on weekdays for less traffic and the best hotel rates, and to get on the road as early as possible.
Since its opening in 1937, the highway has been vulnerable to landslides and shifting ground, operating on a longstanding cycle of landslide, closure, repair, reopening and then another landslide, or sometimes a fire. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States. The 2023-2026 closure was the longest in the highway’s history.
Over time, road crews have used increasingly sophisticated strategies. In the most recent efforts, Caltrans said, it used drones to help survey the slopes and remotely operated bulldozers and excavators to reduce risks to workers.
During the closure, no traffic was allowed on 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute. Drivers detoured inland by way of U.S. 101.
Correspondents of CBS’ 60 Minutes pose for a portrait in 2023. From left to right, they are Sharyn Alfonsi, L. Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper. Former Executive Producer Bill Owens sits on the far right. Only Wertheim, Whitaker and Stahl remain at the program.
CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images/CBS
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When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.
The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.
The battle royale over the network’s most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.
And given CBS’s acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.
That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS’ parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Now they’re seeking approval from Trump’s regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.
A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars
CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images/Variety
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Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images/Variety
But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.
The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.
Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network’s coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons’ takeover.
With Pelley’s ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.
Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for The New York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.
Notably, he has no experience in television news.
Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network’s editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.
She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.
A rejection of CBS News executives’ overtures
The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday’s meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn’t having it.
Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to “murder” the program.
In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley’s “antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear.”
In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS’s new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes‘ DNA and pushing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.”
The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.
Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.
After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”
“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven” Vega continued. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
Weiss previously rejected Alfonsi’s and Vega’s allegations. (CBS said Vega’s claims, for example, were “not based in reality” while expressing appreciation for her work.)
Weiss and Bilton say digital threat requires a 60 Minutes overhaul now
In a meeting this morning, Weiss said that Pelley chose his own path — that is, to be fired rather than to find a way to work through his concerns, according to attendees. The network and Weiss have not yet publicly addressed Pelley’s accusations of interference.
Bilton and Weiss say they respect the show’s traditions, its accomplishments and its legacy of enterprise reporting, extended interviews and visual storytelling. It rose in the ratings 9% over the past season under Simon.
The two news leaders say, however, 60 Minutes needs to be overhauled before it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the era of streamers and other sources of news, information and entertainment in the digital age.
Interviews with 12 current and former CBS News staffers, from producers to executives, suggest great reservations and suspicions remain about Weiss’ judgment and her ability to handle the prominent and even famous journalists on whom her division relies.
Weiss had initially sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, dropping a two-anchor format that had sagged in the ratings. Cooper turned down Weiss’ overtures to anchor it and left the network altogether, concerned about her approach, according to associates. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because Cooper has not chosen to speak publicly on the matter.)
David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS’ parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.
Noam Galai/Getty Images for Paramount/Getty Images North America
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Noam Galai/Getty Images for Paramount/Getty Images North America
The ratings have continued to sag under new anchor Tony Dokoupil. And some CBS journalists, including producers who have left the Evening News, have publicly accused Weiss of making editorial decisions driven by politics. She has rejected those claims.
The decision to take on overhauling two key shows — one listing, one highly profitable, both high profile — carries significant risks for Weiss and the network, even apart from other considerations.
But the Ellisons’ presence cannot be ignored.
When Shari Redstone was negotiating the sale of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to the Ellisons’ Skydance Media last year, the network announced the end of Stephen Colbert’s late night show. He had been one of the president’s most biting and acerbic critics.
David Ellison also made a series of concessions directly to Trump’s chief broadcast regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, gutting CBS’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appointing a conservative ombudsman to field complaints of bias against its news reporting.
Carr and other regulators approved the Paramount deal last summer.
The accommodations echo those made by other media titans.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos remade the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which he owns, into a far more hospitable zone for Trump at the outset of his second term. So did Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a noted medical device inventor. Amazon and Blue Origin have multi-billion dollar contracts with the federal government. Soon-Shiong’s medical research firm routinely has patent applications up for review with federal regulators. One was approved Tuesday.
The Ellisons are hoping to win approval from federal regulators next month for their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at more than $110 billion. It would include Warner Bros. Studio, HBO and CNN, among other properties.
As Weiss routs CBS News’ old guard, the question of what role she might play at CNN — and what changes that portends at CBS — hangs over journalists at the two networks. The fate of 60 Minutes serves as a high-stakes case study for both.
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