American media executive Les Moonves was the chairman and chief executive officer of CBS Corp. In July 2018, an article in The New Yorker said that Moonves had sexually harassed at least six women.
Who is Les Moonves?
Les Moonves is a former TV executive who was the chairman and CEO of CBS Corp. He was in charge of the CBS broadcast network, as well as Showtime, Simon & Schuster, and other companies. After having a successful career at Lorimar, where hits like Dallas and Full House were made, and Warner Brothers Television, where hits like Friends and E.R. were made, Moonves joined CBS in 1995. He gave shows like Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Big Brother, and Everybody Loves Raymond the go-ahead, which helped the network get to first place in just a few years. In 1998, when NFL football came back to CBS, ratings went up even more. In July 2018, The New Yorker reported that Moonves was accused by six women of sexually harassing them in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
How Did Moonves Spend His Early Life?
Moonves was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 6, 1949. Moonves’ family moved to the town of Valley Stream on Long Island when he was a year old. As a children, his mother took him to the city to see Broadway shows, which gave him a taste for the arts.
Do You Know about Moonves’s Family?
Moonves’s father, Herman, owned gas stations, and his mother, Josephine, was a stay-at-home mom who later went back to school to become a nurse. David Ben-Gurion was married to the sister of Moonves’ grandfather. This makes Moonves the great-nephew of Israel’s first prime minister.
How was Moonves in School?
Before going to Bucknell University, Moonves went to a public school. He thought about becoming a doctor, but by the time he graduated from college in 1971, he wanted to be an actor.
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Do You Know How Moonves Start his Career?
After college, Moonves went to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse. There, he was taught by the well-known teacher Sanford Meisner, who also taught Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Grace Kelly, Gregory Peck, and Joanne Woodward.
Why did Moonves Left TV Shows?
Moonves was a performer who had some success. In 1975, he moved to Los Angeles and started appearing on TV shows like “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “Cannon”. But his acting career wasn’t going anywhere, and in the end, Moonves decided he’d rather be in charge and make decisions than chase roles.
How Moonves Became CEO of Television?
In 1981, Moonves started working for Saul Ilson, who made The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. He worked at Fox for a while before becoming a vice president at Lorimar Television in 1985. This is the company that made Dallas, Perfect Strangers, and Full House. By 1989, he was running Lorimar as president.
After Warner Brothers TV merged with Lorimar in 1993, Moonves took over as president. There, he made and sold popular shows like Friends and E.R., which helped him get a job at CBS.
Why Did Moonves Choose Career at CBS?
When Moonves took over as president of CBS Entertainment in 1995, the network was in last place, and advertisers didn’t like the fact that its viewers were getting older. He turned around the network’s luck, and reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother helped boost the network’s ratings. Popular shows like “Everybody Loves Raymond”, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”, and “The Big Bang Theory” joined these.
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How Did Moonves became Head of the CBS Board?
Moonves became the CEO of CBS Television in 1998. After Sumner Redstone’s company, Viacom, bought CBS in 1999, Moonves kept moving up the corporate ladder. In April 2003, he became chairman and CEO of CBS. In 2004, Viacom named him co-president and co-chief operating officer. Redstone split up Viacom and CBS in 2006 to stop the stock price from going down. Moonves became the president and CEO of CBS Corp. He is in charge of CBS and other companies like Simon & Schuster and Showtime. Moonves became head of the CBS board in 2016.
Which Mistakes Have Done by Moonves in CBS Company?
When Moonves was in charge, CBS did well. He was in charge when CBS All Access, a streaming service that you pay for, was made. He pushed CBS to make more of its own shows instead of licensing shows from other companies. And he saw that CBS was able to get cable and satellite companies to pay for programming. Moonves made a mistake when he hired Katie Couric to lead the nightly news for $15 million a year, but that wasn’t the only mistake he made at CBS. Moonves was in charge of the company when CBS News aired a 60 Minutes Wednesday segment based on documents that hadn’t been properly checked (this became known as “Memo gate”) and when Charlie Rose left CBS This Morning after being accused of sexual misconduct himself.
Why Donald Trump Speech was Boring?
At a media conference in February 2016, when Donald Trump’s bombastic talk was bringing more attention to the 2016 presidential primaries, Moonves said, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”.
Who Claims of Sexual Harassment & Why?
Ronan Farrow wrote an article for The New Yorker on July 27, 2018, that talked about how Moonves had sexually harassed six women. Moonves was said to have kissed and touched some of the women against their will and asked others to do sexual things for him. Illeana Douglas was one of these women. She said that Moonves had pinned her down on the couch in his office and “violently kissed” her. The women also said that they thought Moonves hurt their careers because they turned him down.
Why CBS Employees were Treated Unfairly?
The alleged incidents happened between the 1980s and the 2000s, with the most recent one happening at a meeting in 2006. Also, the article talked about times when CBS employees were treated unfairly because of their gender or were harassed. When the article came out, CBS’s stock price went down. The CBS board said it would look into the claims independently, but Moonves would keep his job until the investigation was done.
Why Moonves Left His Job on the Commission?
Moonves was a member of Anita Hill’s Commission on Ending Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace. He had spoken out in support of the Me Too movement and its goal of making the workplace fair and just for women. After the New Yorker article, he quit his job on the commission. Moonves has gotten support from female executives and celebrities who have worked with him, like Sharon Osbourne and Lynda Carter.
How Did Moonves Live His Life at Home?
In 1978, Moonves tied the knot with his first wife, Nancy Wiesenfeld. In 2004, they split up. Moonves was still married to Wiesenfeld, but he was seeing Julie Chen. He and Wiesenfeld had been living apart for a while.
Do You Know About Moonves Marriage?
Moonves and Chen got married in 2004, just a few weeks after he got a divorce from his first wife. Moonves and Chen met when he chose Chen, a newsreader for The Early Show, to host the reality show Big Brother. In 2010, Chen became the host of The Talk, a daytime talk show. From his first marriage, Moonves has a daughter and two sons, and from his second marriage to Chen, he has a son.
