The last several weeks have been like few others in American broadcast journalism.At 60 Minutes, the most popular TV news show of the era, Taylor Sheridan-level drama has set in. Nine or ten million weekly viewers on the linear network alone, yet executive producer Tanya Simon was fired. Correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. And just when it seemed like new EP Nick Bilton — a magazine and documentary journalist brought in by newish CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss to replace Simon — might quiet the waters at an introductory staff meeting Monday, he faced a major public undressing from correspondent Scott Pelley. (The word “murder” — of the show — was invoked.) Two days later, Pelley was fired. That prompted a CBS News anchor to pay tribute to him on the air Wednesday, like a fallen solider.What to make of the chaos? What game are Weiss and Bilton playing? Was Pelley going for martyrdom or just angry? And what will the deep-dive newsmagazine look like when it comes back in the fall? The Hollywood Reporter senior editors Alex Weprin and Steven Zeitchik came together to shed some light on the mega-murk.Steven Zeitchik: Just a quiet few days in David Ellison’s kingdom, nothing to see here.Alex Weprin: It’s really kind of crazy.SZ: Let’s start with Bari’s decision to bring in Bilton. It was certainly a surprise to those of us who know him as a print journalist from The New York Times and Vanity Fair — not a guy you think of as running a major broadcast-TV operation.AW: I think Bari wants to shake up the show, and she views being an outsider as an advantage. Especially if she wants to expand its digital presence. I get it in that sense. Still, it was a perplexing choice, if only because 60 Minutes is the most watched news program on television and doesn’t really need fixing, at least on the TV front. This is a huge swing.SZ: And it’s worth noting that the show does have four million subscribers on YouTube; it’s not like 60 Minutes is invisible on the Internet. But the digital transformation is the generous read. The less generous read is she wants to pivot the show away from liberal-minded journalism, maybe even away from Trump-accountability journalism, and she saw the Simon regime as making the administration too uncomfortable. Where do you fall?AW: You’re right the outcome may be what the Trump administration would like, which is a weakened CBS News, given that morale so low. But I also think Bari is sincere when she says she wants to move the show into the future and turn it into television for the 21st century. So while it’s not obvious to me it’s about politics, you can’t ignore the elephant in the room. SZ: And of course both things can be true — the goal is digital, the side benefit is less pushback from Trump. But I’m not even sure it has to be about Trump’s reaction. It could just be about Bari herself wanting more centrism, which was her whole mantra at The Free Press. AW: Definitely possible too.SZ: Let’s talk about Bilton. How has his first week (why does it seem like longer) gone in your view?AW: Anytime you’re coming in after high-profile people like Tanya Simon have been let go you have to work to win over the staff. You need to have tact when you, say, let go of veterans like Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, as Bari did. And I’m not sure Nick and Bari had that or were successful in persuading the staff that everything has been on the up -and-up.SZ: We’ve both worked at enough media outlets to know how impossible the new-boss role is. So I have some sympathy for Bilton. On the other hand, you’d think he would know what does and doesn’t work in that role given his own decades under exactly those bosses.AW: I think he probably does but he’s just not been on the management side before, at least not at this scale. And don’t forget, the structure of 60 Minutes is so different from the structure of a newspaper or magazine — just how they construct their story pitches or how each correspondent has a team of producers. You have to recognize what isn’t the same and how much people are willing to play ball and adapt, and I’m not sure Nick has done that yet. But as you said, it has only been a week. Or a year, I can’t be sure.SZ: Let’s also not forget who he’s working with too. 60 Minutes correspondents are very good, but they also know they’re very good.AW: There’s no shortage of people who work in TV news who are extremely self-confident. So definitely, but it’s not unique to 60 Minutes. A lot of people in the industry think they’re untouchable. That said, 60 Minutes has always operated a little differently even for a TV news show. They’re looked at differently within CBS because they’re so successful; they hadn’t been in the same offices as the rest of the news division for most of their history.SZ: On an island, you could say.AW: Absolutely.SZ: You know there’s a cynical view that Bari and Bilton wanted to provoke a reaction — that they want to blow up the show and so they just laid some dynamite for the staff to trip on.AW: If you really want to blow it up you could fire everybody right away. But bringing in Bilton — I think it’s a sincere effort to redefine it. I think she wants to do that and he wants to do that. It’s definitely true that they’re coming with authority and saying anyone who doesn’t like what we’re doing is free to leave. But while some multi-millionaire correspondents can afford to do that, the staff — the producers and people who make the show run — need jobs. And Bari and Bilton need them. So if that was the approach then I think it’s the wrong one.SZ: You have a lot of sources in that building. How alienated is that production staff right now — what are you hearing?AW: I think pretty demoralized. This is something they believed in for a long time and it seems like its being slowly being taken away. But again, a lot of them can’t afford to walk out the door in protest, at least not until they have something else lined up.