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UPDATED: I'm told Maria Crenna, EVP of development at Paramount TV, and Brian Banks, SVP of comedy development at Paramount TV, and Jocelyn Fried, VP of current programming at Paramount TV, have lost their jobs. Crenna, daughter of the late actor Richard Crenna, worked for Les Moonves for 20 years dating back to his days at Warner Bros TV. And Banks used to be her assistant before he rose up through the ranks. "This is the first of breach of loyalty by Les to his longtime employees," one senior agent told me.
CBS Lays Off 3 Veterans At Paramount TV
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Bout time. Comedy shelves have been bare for some time there.
Color me STUNNED. Two nice people. Wondering when the fat will be cut at CBS TV. Lord knows there are some useless and talentless people walking those halls.
This is sad news. Maria is a fine executive and she will be much missed.
What a bummer. Maria is one of the the rare decent human beings in the game. She will be missed.
Will Dawn Ostroff finally succumb after years of cronyism has somehow kept her job intact?
Talentless group. No loss. Now, when will Les be cutting his 60 million dollar salary instead of laying off staffers who represent maybe two hundred grand?
Right before Christmas too. Classy.
The first breach of loyalty to his longtime employees? Are you serious? The fact that he is surrounded by people who have worked with him for 15-20 year stretches has nothing to do with loyalty. Servility, maybe. Battered wife syndrome, maybe, with a dash of Stockholm syndrome too.
How loyal can a guy be when his longtime vets are the poorest paid network and studio execs in the business? When they are routinely humiliated in meetings, thrown under the bus for his decisions, and sleep with their Blackberries cradled in their arms for fear of missing a 3 AM email? Bonuses are a pittance compared to other nets, and especially compared to his own salary, and your work is micromanaged down to vocabulary choices in emails.
CBS is one giant hostage crisis, and if anyone had any humanity left at all, they’d call the LAPD to send over a SWAT team to rescue those people.
They should try and fire Ghen Maynard again. He’s that worthless. Virtually a no talent standout in a sea of no talents. No easy accomplishment
nice people, but never understood what they did over there….
Brian Banks is a good guy, but Maria is not a nice person at all. What comes around goes around…finally.
Unreal. Brian is talented and for sure CBS’s loss. Shame on them for letting him go.
One less Les fembot and humorless Comedy VP. Merry Xmas, you’re fired for failing to supply more of the shit they call CBS comedy. Doesn’t matter. As long as there’s a future in televised mediocrity, they will resurface. They all resurface. But Joceyln is a good person and a producer-friendly Current Exec. Probably her demise.
Geez…all you writers with the worthless comments about CBS…looks like your work can’t even rise to “televised mediocrity”…maybe YouTube is your future…
Maria and Brian are very talented, caring, good people!
Oh no! How will television be able to continue without these scary-talented executives? I mean, they’re 100% of the reason that the medium is so wonderful. Think of their monumental contributions!
Having seen Maria Crenna in action only once, I have to say that, on at least that one time, her naivete about key issues in development was really stunning. Maybe she was having a bad day, but it was a spectacularly bad day she was having…
I cannot fathom some of the above-written comments like, “Talentless group. No loss.” Seriously? Do you have no heart? These people’s salaries are hardly that of a UPS driver, yet, CBS cuts them while other execs, literally, are still getting $400K bonuses. If the company, lead by those same execs, isn’t being run correctly, then why should the people below them be the ones to take the hit… and not their bonuses? $400K? How many jobs at CBS could that save, probably at least eight for a year. If these people were ‘talentless’, then why were they not spoken to about their ‘talent’ or why were their contracts picked up year after year.
The funny thing is, the people ‘bold’ enough to (hide behind an anon name and) stomp on these people while they’re down probably are not objective enough to realize that they, themselves, are probably impossible a$$holes to work with and they’ll be next.
I’m shocked by some of these comments.
Les Moonves IS the single most loyal exec in Hollywood, period. The fact that an incredibly rude, arrogant and talentless drip like Maria Crenna has lasted all these years validates Monnves’ being loyal, almost to a fault.
Karma is a bitch and Maria Crenna is certainy a bitch. Her being in charge of comedy is the only comedic thing about Crenna…a woman without any sense of humor or humility. Hopefully she takes a permanet break from television, and does us all a favor!!!
although i agree that knocking people while they’re down is not in the best taste – “classless” has no clue about the executives that are being referred to…UPS drivers! i think not –
…try significantly upwards of that “bonus” being referred to in some cases…
laying off three high paid execs allows the studio to save a number of assistant and coordinator positions that would have otherwise have had to make up the $$ amount. they’ve probably saved almost $2M annually by laying off three execs, when factoring in salary, benefits and payroll taxes – that’s a whole hell of a lot of UPS drivers…
not to say there’s not more coming – i’m sure they’ve barely scratched the surface.
Brian Banks will land somewhere soon. He’s too talented to be unemployed for long. Great guy. Very unfortunate.
They didn’t develop Cavemen, Carpoolers or According to Jim or the new Knight Rider.
That already puts them towards the top.
And Brian is really a great guy. You would know that if you’ve worked with him. If you’re making negative comments about him, you haven’t.
““classless” has no clue about the executives that are being referred to…UPS drivers!”
Actually, I do. I’m also talking about everyone in the department who got laid off, not just these ‘top three’. There’s one lay off that I don’t know if it will be leaked but, wow… if that one comes out, whew.
realitybites: “they’ve probably saved almost $2M annually by laying off three execs, ”
Really? I would probably put it at about half of that…maybe less.
Classless Comments whines “The funny thing is, the people ‘bold’ enough to (hide behind an anon name and) stomp on these people while they’re down probably are not objective enough to realize that they, themselves, are probably impossible a$$holes to work with and they’ll be next.”
So… Classless Comments is your real name? How bold of you to post it. What is that, Dutch? Or more like you’re Maria’s assistant.
Those execs were useless. And to those who think it’s “classless” to fire people before Xmas, when is the “classy” time to fire a useless exec?
“So… Classless Comments is your real name? How bold of you to post it. What is that, Dutch? Or more like you’re Maria’s assistant.”
How naive are you? Nobody is going to use their real name on here, the whole job security ‘thing’. And no, I have nothing to do with Maria, hardly know her at all, I don’t even work at CBS (thank god).
The ‘classy’ time to fire someone is not a last second, hurry before the year end rush thing… you don’t renew their contract they’re so bad. I’m not disputing the level of these people’s qualifications, like I said, I hardly know them, but this was a cowardly thing to do. This wasn’t about their talent, it was about posting a loss for a tax write-off, that’s it. Like I said, if this was about their job performance, they would have been talked to and not renewed.
And like I said, if CBS is that strapped for cash, then the execs (who steer the ship) need to not take their annual bonus, ya know, being that they’re obviously hurting for money, so much so that they needed to do a last ditch round of cuts before taxes.
No matter what you think about the content, these are actual people that deserve a little respect in these hard times. They lost their jobs – don’t you think that’s enough for them to deal with at a time like this? Each and every one of them are good people, and it’s an awful thing to have happen at any time of the year.
“Classless” says inexplicably: “I’m not disputing the level of these people’s qualifications, like I said, I hardly know them, but… This wasn’t about their talent…”
So, you admit you don’t know these people… but you’re positive they weren’t fired because of their lack of talent? So since you don’t know them but you do know why they were fired, then I guess you must be psychic?
Hey, here’s an idea – if you don’t know about something, maybe you shouldn’t embarrass yourself by trying to have an opinion about it.
Do you think these deadwood execs would have been fired if they were the network’s best and the brightest? Um, no. You don’t fire the indispensable employees, Einstein. You dump the losers, and that’s what happened.
“Hey, here’s an idea – if you don’t know about something, maybe you shouldn’t embarrass yourself by trying to have an opinion about it.”
You pompous ass… if you bothered to read the above posts of mine, I’m mainly talking about the OTHER people (on top of the three in this article) that were fired. I do know a lot about the going’s on of CBS, although I do not work there any more, okay? Is that good enough for you? I just don’t know Maria on a level like, apparently, you do where you’re soooo bitter about her.
“You don’t fire the indispensable employees, Einstein.”
Oh, that’s right, because that’s how it works in this town… it’s all “talent-based” in how people are promoted, has nothing to do with who’s pals with so and so, are who’s a nephew of an exec, and so on. Yeah, it’s ALL talent-based in this town.
Are you kidding me? There are people in high positions in this town who are shockingly incompetent who didn’t even go to college (let alone a film program!) and, to keep themselves above people finding that out, they hold everyone down through cut-throat politics and whatever else to put fear into others to leave them be. If LA were all about “talent,” then the best and brightest film students would be handed jobs upon graduation vs. this cronyism that cripples our industry. Rarely are people rewarded for speaking up with good ideas or given projects based on what they can truly do for the company… why? Because the people who are higher than them KNOW that the people truly with talent will show them up.
Now, at the assistant to mid-range level? What’s the point of hacking 50K/year jobs for general office types? It’s not right, not until execs are willing to give up their bonuses for putting the company in a position where they feel they need to save money in the last quarter by cutting jobs of people who need that money the most. If there were under-performing, then you’d have the three talks with them (CBS policy). But no, that didn’t happen… just, done. Merry Christmas.
Your tone is completely arrogant and heartless. Obviously you hate Maria on a personal level, for however you feel slighted but this is the holidays… this could have been done in the last quarter or, like I said, not renewed.
What do you think about the pregnant mid-level girl about to give birth in two months who got fired, leaving her with no medical. She deserved that too, right?
It was a heartless and gutless move. I’m sorry you don’t see it that way.
I have worked with both of them. Brian is a great person, Maria…not so much.
Ms. Crenna-lacking in the sense of humor dept along with the I’m better than you attitude. CBS will survive without and it’s about time the fat gets cut.
Anonymous from December 17th and Nowhere Man…What XMAS tree lots are you guys working at?…need to get trees…please let me know. Thanks.
I’m not bitter, Classless, I live in the real world whereas you live in a fantasy land where no one should ever be fired no matter how worthless they are.
The people who were fired are unimportant to the organization by definition – if the business couldn’t run without them, they wouldn’t have been fired, get it?
And no, I don’t think pregnant women are a special class of people who cannot be fired if they are deemed to be unnecessary to the functions of a company. A woman’s decision to have unprotected sex (either planned or unplanned) should have nothing to do with whether she keeps her job. Women in the workplace don’t need to be coddled and treated differently than men, thank you very much.
Left up to you, I guess, you’d first layoff the women who decided to focus on their careers and NOT get knocked up, then move on to the men, leaving your company stocked with nothing but unfirable pregnant women. Good plan. Very forward-looking.
Viacom is a business, do you not understand that? People don’t just get to work there because they’ve been working there… or because they got preggers… or because it happens to be the same month as some god’s birthday. It is a business.
Stop embarrassing yourself already. Go to Israel and live on a co-op and leave us adults in the real world to do our business.
Good lord, ohno.
Although you make one or two logical and reasonable arguments in your comments, they get a little lost amongst the bitter (and kind of assholish) vitriol you’re spewing. Relax, already. No need for personal attacks. Damn.