The women take the NCAA ratings championship, news networks ready letter to ask Joe Biden and Donald Trump to publicly commit to a debate, the solar eclipse juices TV ratings, controversy hits NPR, a MAGA Media influencer accuses Benny Johnson of "stealing" her content, Molly Jong-Fast needles Jim VandeHei, The Colorado Sun calls out its state GOP for expelling its reporter, the YouTube-TikTok wars continue, Reddit shares continue to slide, "Dune: Part Two" gets a digital release date, Beyoncé breaks another record, and more. But first, the A1.

CBS News' Streaming Vision 

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CBS News is overhauling its streaming platform.

The Tiffany Network's news division announced Tuesday that it will invest more deeply into its digital offering, entirely rebranding the streamer as CBS News 24/7.

The Wendy McMahon-led changes, set to be implemented April 22, will feature new programming. A slate of fresh shows include "CBS News Confirmed," a program solely devoted to combatting misinformation, as well as "CBS News 24/7," a "live, whip-around newscast" that will "capture what’s happening across the globe in real time." John Dickerson's show will also expand to 90 minutes later in the spring. In addition, the network is expanding its presence across the country, staffing "news hubs" with journalists in cities from Cleveland to Las Vegas. 

The move by CBS News, of course, comes as legacy television news outlets grapple with the rapidly declining linear business. CNN and NBC News have invested in streaming networks of their own.

We sent some questions over to McMahon about CBS News' ambitions in the streaming space. Below you'll find the Q&A, which has been edited for length.

Can you elaborate on the decision-making process that led to the expansion and rebranding of CBS News' streaming platform?
 
Our ambition is to be #1 in free streaming, and we are leveraging the playbook we used to take our 14 owned-and-operated stations’ local news streams from fourth to first against their in-market competition in two short years. The three pillars for CBS News 24/7 are: lean into our iconic shows and talent, win breaking news, and optimize the programming.
 
As linear television continues its rapid decline, other news organizations have also made big moves into streaming. What do you believe makes CBS News' entreat into the space unique?
 
CBS was the first network to launch streaming channels .... So, we benefit from being first movers. Fast forward to the present day, the things that help CBS News and Stations stand out is the enduring quality of the journalism we produce and how our network and local teams are working together like never before .... We’re combining the newsgathering and speed of our local teams with national scale and depth to serve all of America.

It's been a brutal several months for those who work in the news industry, with too many layoffs to count. When do you think these rapidly changing business models will find some stability?

There's a tremendous amount of change happening in our industry right now, and many companies are looking at ways to innovate and evolve. What I tell our teams is the only thing that's constant is change, and we must adapt to and embrace change.
 
You're launching a show called "CBS News Confirmed." The program aims to tackle head on misinformation. What led you to put more resources behind this and do you think, as an industry, the press is doing enough to combat conspiracy theories and dismantle outright disinformation?
 
I can only speak for CBS News, and I know in this organization, trust is our currency. The scale of deep fakes and misinformation out there and the speed at which that false information gets around is quite staggering.

What is the biggest threat to journalism in America, as you see it?

Misinformation, deep fakes and disinformation are all certainly huge threats. That's why we started and are investing heavily in CBS News Confirmed.
 
You're opening news hubs in cities across the South and Midwest. Can you tell us more about these hubs and why you believe it's important to invest resources into establishing a presence in these specific areas?
 
The plans that we announced today include introducing and embedding multi-skilled journalists in key cities where we can truly tap into communities and feature the voices and viewpoints of people who we otherwise might not be hear from. These news hubs will help us overall respond to stories faster during breaking news simply because we will have people there. Our national movement of community journalism is in response to population shifts across the country, and it's an extension of what we did at CBS Stations to turn neighborhoods into newsrooms. And on the heels of the election, I can't think of a better time to do this. 
 
Why do you believe journalism has a bright future, despite the herculean challenges confronting the industry?
 
At our town hall meeting today, I said journalism matters — and it will continue to matter. ... There will always be a need for independent, fact-based reporting.

CNN Photo Illustration/C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos/Getty Images

A Slam Dunk for Women: The real winner of the NCAA championship this year? The women's league. For the first time ever, the NCAA men's championship game averaged fewer viewers than the women's title game. UConn's victory over Purdue on Monday night, which aired on TNT and TBS, averaged 14.82 million viewers — far short of the 18.87 million who watched Caitlin Clark and Iowa take on South Carolina. (I'm told that on Max, the game delivered the largest audience for a live sporting event to date, but the company declined to detail how many viewers streamed the game.)

🔍 Zooming in: While the women outshined the men, The WSJ's Rachel Bachman and Isabella Simonetti noted that "won’t be reflected in the money each side earned for TV rights: $6.5 million for the women’s tournament and $873 million for the men’s." The duo write, "The wide discrepancy raises the question of whether college athletics officials have failed to capitalize on a surge in popularity in the women’s game. A new deal that goes into effect next season will allocate some $65 million a year for the women’s game, a substantial jump but still a fraction of the men’s haul." 

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Demanding a Debate: Television news networks want Joe Biden and Donald Trump to commit to a debate. CNN, NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, and the right-wing talk channel Fox News (no word on whether the news outlets will seek to have Newsmax and OAN also link arms on this effort) have drafted a letter to urge the two candidates "to publicly commit to participating in general election debates before November’s election." The NYT's Michael Grynbaum, who first reported on the letter, noted that the networks are aiming to get more signatories before sending the letter. The letter, which has not been finalized, underscored that debates have "played a vital role in every presidential election of the past 50 years, dating to 1976." CNN's Hadas Gold has more here. 

🔍 Zooming in: While debates have indeed played crucial roles in American elections for decades, we no longer live in normal times. Gone are the days where two candidates meet for a good spirited debate on public policy. The harsh reality is we live in a world in which Trump uses sizable platforms to lob nasty insults and spread lies and conspiracy theories to large audiences. In fact, it got so bad during the 2020 presidential debates, that the Commission on Presidential Debates had to introduce new rules allowing the moderator to mute the microphone of a candidate if they flagrantly disregarded the rules, as Trump likes to do. Which is all to say, it's a little curious that news networks are effectively pressuring Biden to get on stage with an unhinged candidate who has proven to be uncontrollable by moderators and shows little interest in debating public policy. 

CNN Photo Illustration/Graeme Sloan/Sipa/AP

Uproar in Radio: NPR is in an unusual — and quite uncomfortable — position. Executives at the outlet woke up to reading a scathing piece about their newsroom in Bari Weiss' The Free Press, written by their very own senior business editor Uri Berliner. Berliner lampooned NPR in the 3,500-word piece, saying it "lost America's trust" by supposedly embracing a "progressive worldview," rejecting "viewpoint diversity," and "telling listeners how to think." Berliner took issue with the way NPR has covered several stories, including "Russiagate," the Covid-19 lab-leak theory, and the New York Post's Hunter Biden story. Suffice to say that the views Berliner articulated felt more aligned with the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal than NPR.

In an all-staff memo sent Tuesday afternoon, NPR Editor-In-Chief Edith Chapin responded directly to Berliner, pushing back against his characterization of the outlet. "I and my colleagues on the leadership team strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism and the integrity of our newsroom processes," she said, in the note first reported by The NYT's Benjamin Mullin. Chapin said that "none of our work is above scrutiny or critique" and that it is important to "have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole." Chapin added, "Ideally, we engage in this debate respectfully, with the goal of lifting up and strengthening each other’s work." 

🔍 Zooming in: An NPR spokesperson declined to comment on the matter to me beyond the note. But the public radio newsroom's problems stemming from it are only beginning. Fox News quickly pounced on the essay to attack NPR and the media at large. And while Berliner wrote in the piece that defunding NPR "isn't the answer," it's too easy to see how Republicans will almost certainly use his essay to assail the outlet's credibility and, perhaps, call for that very thing. At the very least, it seems like a fairly safe bet to expect that a Jim Jordan type in Congress might call Berliner and NPR executives before a committee for a grilling session. Time will tell. 

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The Creator Commerce Craze: YouTube on Tuesday launched more shopping features for creators as the Google-owned video giant aims to fend off a challenge from TikTok Shop. The new features allow YouTubers to create "shopping collections" and curate their favorite items. Which is fine and dandy, sure. But it's another stone paving the way to an internet in which platforms just serve as places for creators to shill for products in a bid to collect gobs of referral fees. Whether it's TikTok or Instagram or YouTube — the internet has become oversaturated with template-like videos aimed at selling Amazon products to the masses. Surely this phase will burn off and die. It's only a matter of time. Right?

► WIRED's Lauren Goode offered this (spot on?) analysis: "I am just not enjoying social media as much these days. All forms of it. Threads doesn't serve up news or time-delays it; Twitter is...Twitter; plus there are the usual lit-match or self-promo posts in these news feeds. Video feeds are filled with shopping. I used to go to YouTube for longform videos and increasingly more ads and shorts appear in results. Is this a tipping point? Probably not. I still spend time on IG. Most just aren't delivering substantive stuff."

CNN Photo Illustration/Warner Bros. Pictures

'Dune' Day: Mark it on your calendars. Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi epic "Dune: Part Two" is set to be released for purchase on digital platforms on April 16 (next Tuesday) after raking in $660 million at the global box office. The digital release — which comes as the Legendary and Warner Bros. Pictures masterpiece continues to play in theaters — will be packed with special features. If you want the Blu-ray disc, however, you'll have to wait a little while longer. Physical copies of the film will not be available until May 14.  The Wrap's Drew Taylor has all the details here.