For the first time since the 1970s, you can buy a Westinghouse air conditioner or flat-screen TV or electric blanket, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the company that used to be headquartered in Pittsburgh and employ hundreds of thousands of people, including Betty Furness.
The “Westinghouse” logo is little more than a decoration now. Companies in China make the products and importers pay a license fee to stick on a Westinghouse trademark. None of them have any connection to any appliance, radio or other equipment once made in Pittsburgh, Ohio or New Jersey, where the old Westinghouse had factories. They’re trading on nostalgia and whatever good reputation the old Westinghouse company had.
Same thing for RCA. RCA, the company that brought radio, TV, color TV and videotape recorders to the masses and pioneered in computers and satellite technology, hasn’t existed in any meaningful way since 1987. There are products labeled “RCA” in stores that run the gamut from pretty good to absolute junk. Like Westinghouse, companies pay to use the RCA trademark.
General Electric, too. The old GE company no longer exists. Products labeled “GE” are made in China by a variety of firms. Craftsman is no longer made for Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Sears’ old rival, Montgomery Ward, is just a trademark used by the mail-order company that used to be known as Fingerhut.
I was thinking about this when I heard the news that Scott Pelley had been fired by CBS News after 37 years. Pelley was terminated after he stood up to a new hatchet-person sent to takeover “60 Minutes.” The new executive producer of “60 Minutes” has almost no experience in television news and very little experience in journalism at all, but he’s a reliable boot-licker for the new owners of CBS.
What’s happening at CBS is what’s happened to all of those famous U.S. brand names that are just historic trademarks slapped on junk. There is still a “CBS Network” and there will likely still be a “60 Minutes” but what’s inside won’t be the same.
“CBS” is no more than another piece of IP — intellectual property — to be monetized and stripped of all of its value. They did it to American manufacturing; now they’re doing it to journalism. They still publish “The Washington Post,” but it’s a weak imitation of what it was; it’s just another trademark.
Lots of folks are pointing to the ideological component of the changes at CBS, which has been purchased by the hyper-wealthy Ellison family, which is an ally of the Trump administration. I think there’s an ideological component, but don’t overlook the financial component.
The new owners of CBS are ripping the wiring out of the walls to sell the copper. They’re going to monetize whatever IP they can strip. They have 90 years of CBS archives to plunder and turn into cash, after all. What’s left on the air is going to be cheap. (Take the replacement of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” with paid programming provided by Byron Allen. Does it remove a thorn from Trump’s side? Yes. Does it also turn an expense into revenue? Also yes.)
Ideologically, once people like Scott Pelley are chased away, “60 Minutes” and other CBS News productions are going to become a kind of half-assed, Fox News imitation, because that’s what the people in charge want to watch. But almost as importantly, it will be very, very cheap.
Sending foreign correspondents around the world to bring back stories for “60 Minutes” is expensive. Putting a bunch of talking heads in a room to yell opinions at one another is cheap.
One other thing. Did you know who owned the trademarks for the old Westinghouse Electric Corp. between 1997 and 2021?
Well, back in 1995, Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse purchased New York-based CBS Corp. But within four years, all of the traditional Westinghouse businesses had been closed or sold, and the parent corporation renamed itself CBS Corp.
That’s right: For 25 years, all of the old Westinghouse trademarks were owned by CBS.
Maybe that’s where they’re getting the idea to transform CBS, the institution, into “CBS,” the trademark — just another hollowed-out brand name, coasting on its old reputation.