Banter update: CBS CEO Leslie Moonves accused of sexual misconduct in New Yorker exposé

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2018

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

Late on Friday afternoon, a New Yorker investigation by Ronan Farrow dropped, revealing accusations of misconduct against Leslie Moonves by six women. The CBS board met on Monday and announced that Moonves would remain at work while the board works to hire outside counsel to conduct an investigation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I am joined by my partner in banter, Matt Bellany of the Hollywood Reporter. Hello, Matt.
0:04.2	Hello. So as we are talking, the board of CBS is meeting. This has been a gigantic bombshell in Hollywood.
0:12.9	Les Moonvez, the head of CBS, accused of misconduct by a number of women in a story in the New Yorker. The allegations for the most part are
0:23.3	more than 20 years old, but they are not good, that he pounced on Ileana Douglas when she was
0:29.2	going to be in a CBS show, and when she rebuffed him after he pinned her down, he allegedly
0:34.5	tried to destroy her career. He acknowledges that he may have made her uncomfortable and may have done something he ought not to have done.
0:41.8	This again is many years ago at this point, but he says he did not attempt to retaliate against any of the women who he allegedly made these aggressive passes at.
0:51.6	He is simultaneously locked in a death match with Shari Redstone, who controls Viacom and CBS.
0:57.6	They are in litigation. So this kind of allegation, while they are fighting it out, the chief
1:03.2	executive and chairman of CBS versus the person who owns the controlling shares at this point,
1:08.7	comes at a good time for Sherry Redstone and certainly
1:11.2	Les Moonvis believes that she wants to undermine him. So the board is meeting as we speak,
1:16.8	as I said, as we tape this conversation. And the question is, will there be any action now?
1:21.7	They've already announced an investigation. Right. And it's six women, and it's a period of
1:26.7	several decades. There is one allegation from just
1:29.3	over a decade ago, but most of this stuff is from the 90s and even the 80s. And in this climate,
1:35.7	in this context that we're all working through, the Me Too movement, is this enough to topple
1:41.5	one of the most powerful CEOs in entertainment history? That's a question I think
1:46.7	that everyone is asking around town right now is will less be forced to step down. Yes, and it's clear
1:52.5	that Wall Street does not like that idea very much. After we broke the story about the coming story
1:57.7	on Friday morning at the Hollywood Reporter, the stock started to go down.
2:02.2	It's continued to go down today. And I think that is because people are foreseeing a world
	...

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