The CEO of CBS Tried to Destroy Janet Jackson's Career After Her Super Bowl Show
Janet Jackson is back on the scene after what feels like an unbearably cruel absence. After her 2004 Super Bowl performance with Justin Timberlake, culminating in the now infamous "wardrobe malfunction," Jackson's career seemed to suddenly stall while Timberlake's climbed higher and higher. Some fans and critics claimed that Jackson was being held accountable while Timberlake wasn't―and a new report suggests that they were right.
In August, Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS, was implicated in his own #MeToo scandal, facing allegtions of sexual misconduct according to Ronan Farrow writing for The New Yorker. Since then, the network and Moonves have been reportedly in quiet negotiations about his exit. But with the heightened scrutiny in the wake of the allegations, still more dramatic stories about Moonves's tenure are surfacing.
A shocking new report from the Huffington Post alleges that after Jackson's Super Bowl performance, Moonves became "obsessed" with ruining her career. According to Yashar Ali:
Moonves banned Jackson and Timberlake from the 2004 Grammys broadcast airing on CBS the week after the Super Bowl. But Timberlake was allowed to perform after he tearfully apologized for the incident, according to conversations Moonves had with my sources.
The CBS chief executive, according to sources who spoke to me, was furious that Jackson didn’t make a similarly contrite apology to him. The fallout from the incident inflicted significant damage on Jackson’s career―which until that point had produced 10 No. 1 hits―and still reverberates to this day.
Both critics and allies of Moonves who spoke to the Huffington Post corroborate that the CEO was fixated on punishing Jackson. Even after banning her and Timberlake from the Grammys, Moonves then reportedly ordered VH1 and MTV (both owned by Viacom, the then-parent company of CBS) and all Viacom-owned stations to stop playing Jackson's videos and music, a move that would have had devastating impact on the album she released shortly after the Super Bowl.
While this would have seemed like a grandiose conspiracy only a year ago, today, with Harvey Weinstien facing accusations of destroying the careers of actresses who resisted his advances, it sounds depressingly plausible. But if the allegations against Moonves are true, there's at least a sense of justice: Jackson, after all, still has a career and a future. The same can't be said for Moonves.
