Nearly a week after he published the bombshell piece about significant layoffs coming next year to CNN that will impact those behind and in front of the camera, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported Wednesday night that CNN host and former Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace wasn’t simply departing the network because he wanted to explore podcast, but rather due to the fact his shows were being axed (and thus he wanted to get out ahead of any announcement).
Byers explained that Wallace made the decision “on Monday evening” in a call to CNN’s “talent chief Amy Entelis...that he intended to leave at the end of his contract,” which was followed shortly thereafter in a nauseatingly coordinated move, a Daily Beast article heralding his departure to look at “streaming or podcast” since that’s “where the action seems to be.”
Byers made clear he didn’t buy that someone with a $7 million salary was just leaving willy nilly, placing him alongside other recent announcements of future departures in Hoda Kotb from NBC’s Today and Norah O’Donnell from the CBS Evening News.
Simply put, what all three have in common can be summed up in one word: money.
In other words, none of them wanted to take a paycut for the millions or tens of millions they had been making for decades as corporate journalists.
Byers spilled the beans that Wallace’s two shows — an interview show called Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? and a Saturday morning panel chatfest The Chris Wallace Show — were being canned by CNN boss Mark Thompson.
“Instead, Thompson and Entelis intended to offer Wallace a new role as an analyst, which would have resulted in a significantly diminished compensation package and, presumably, far less air time,” Byers explained.
Wallace insisted to Byers in a text message he “had already decided...six months ago to leave CNN” when his contract was up and thus these cancellations and pay cuts are “irrelevant.”
Seemingly unswayed by this, Byers pointed out the hard facts about Wallace’s show: “The most recent broadcast of The Chris Wallace Show drew 450,000 viewers and just 85,000 in the advertiser-coveted 25-to-54-year-old demo—an audience size at which it’s increasingly hard to justify most of the talent salaries at CNN.”
Byers doubled down on his reporting about layoffs next year by Thompson, including the fact that they “will include some high-priced TV talent,” so Wallace was merely “one of its first and most obvious casualties.”
