Report: CBS News To Slimdown

CBS News has hired a consulting firm to draw up plans for a corporate slimdown where an executive is the brother of the network’s cost-slashing co-president, The NY Post has learned.

Neeraj Khemlani joined CBS as co-president in May and quickly signaled he planned to cut expenses across the third-place news network, which is owned by media giant ViacomCBS. Almost immediately after Khemlani took the reins, executives from the firm FTI Consulting were brought in, employees told The Post.

FTI doesn’t appear to have significant experience in media and broadcast consulting, but it got the plum job.

“A month or two after Neeraj started, we got emails,” a CBS employee said. The source added that upward of 100 consultants were soon organizing Zoom meetings across CBS’s broadcast, digital and local news divisions and asking for presentations on their departments.

“They were looking for ways to create efficiencies in the news organization,” the source said, adding that it ultimately translated to layoffs and consolidation for many.

“Everyone knows Neeraj is an accountant masquerading as a journalist,” another insider told The Post. “It’s no surprise his brother is a consultant he hired to cut costs — his sole job is to slim everything down for sale.”

Sources inside CBS told The Post they were questioning the hire of FTI because it is not known for media consulting like rivals McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group. According to its website, FTI hasn’t had any major TV clients recently outside of CBS.

FTI’s top media consultant Luke Schaeffer, who has worked on the CBS account, boasts of non-TV clients like the digital publication Refinery29 when it merged with Vice Media, or radio giant Entercom when it merged with CBS Radio.

Sources previously told The Post that Khemlani, a former Hearst exec and “60 Minutes” producer, has been “cutting CBS to the bone,” slimming down the company’s digital newsroom and opting to use some local news reporting in broadcast news reports.

Khemlani and his co-president Wendy McMahon replaced legendary newshound Susan Zirinsky, who had succeeded David Rhodes as CBS News president following a turbulent period marred by sexual misconduct allegations that ousted CBS CEO Les Moonves, “60 Minutes” boss Jeff Fager and others.

Now, sources told The Post that Khemlani is looking to cut the salary of “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell, who currently makes in the ballpark of $8 million.