Rob Schneider's "conservative The View" pitch reportedly flopped at The L.A. Times

Schneider grifted too close to the sun with his proposal.

Rob Schneider's

Like many in the MAGA crowd, Rob Schneider is trying to make what money he can off of shilling right-wing culture war bullshit. These days, there seem to be more powerful people interested in investing in that particular grift, and apparently The L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is one of them. According to a report from Status, Schneider was in “active talks” with the mogul to launch a “conservative alternative to The View.” (” He envisioned it as a talk show with a rotating panel of hosts that would appeal to the MAGA crowd and which would be filmed live in front of a studio audience.”) Unfortunately, Schneider seems to have grifted too close to the sun: the Saturday Night Live alum allegedly “proposed an eye-popping annual budget north of $14 million to produce the show,” and Soon-shiong was “taken aback” by the proposal, ultimately walking away from the talks before any deals were made.

Clearly, it wasn’t “conservative The View” that irked Soon-shiong, but the price tag attached—in fact Status reports the owner “believed the show could be created for a fraction of the cost using his in-house LA Times Studios division.” Soon-shiong apparently believes that on-camera content is the future of the organization. Yes folks, it’s looking like yet another pivot to video. What is it they say about people who don’t learn from history, again?

There are some futuristic elements of this pivot to video plan, namely that L.A. Times Studios president Anna Magzanyan has allegedly directed that scripts for video content be written up by ChatGPT. According to Status, this has raised obvious concerns in the newsroom (no surprise, as AI is frequently inaccurate in addition to being scabby), but “Magzanyan has remained adamant about leveraging the tool as a cost-cutting measure.” They’re also supposedly hiring influencers and actors to be their on-camera talent, as opposed to, you know, journalists with interview experience. If only Rob Schneider had aimed a little lower, he, too could’ve been part of the AI slop future. 

 
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