Jill Schlesinger isn’t afraid to tell you how to really handle your dollars and cents.
The former head of an investment advisory firm, Schlesinger has served as a business analyst for CBS News since 2013, helping to translate complex financial issues for everyday viewers and listeners. Now she’s going to take her blunt advice to a new podcast, part of an effort by the Paramount Skydance news operation to build properties that aren’t necessarily tied to its flagship TV programs.
“Money Moves With Jill Schlesinger” will drop every Tuesday and Thursday, starting June 30, and feature the business-savvy advisor having deeper conversations with listeners, spending part of the program providing direct answers to members of her audience.
In some cases, she can be very direct. “There are so many people out there spouting bulls—- that it is shocking to me,” she says during one “Money Moves” episode.
If the provocative language seems unexpected from a CBS News property, the surprise is part of the point.
Schlesinger represents the latest effort by Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor in chief, to create new CBS News programming that spotlights experts and provocative voices. Such work “means treating YouTube and social media as mediums unto themselves, not afterthoughts…and it means investing in our talent by building brands around them — and more deeply engaging the audiences that already love them,” Weiss said during a town hall meeting with CBS News staffers earlier this year.
More traditional news outlets are growing comfortable with less formal presentations and personalities, part of a gradual coming together of stories news brands and new, digital upstarts who are winning significant slices of attention through newsletters, podcasts and subscription media products.
Schlesinger, a certified financial planner, says she’s not afraid to steer her audience away from some traditional sources of money counsel. “Part of the show will be dedicated to calling out the operators trying to sell you things you don’t need (hello, ‘finfluencers’),” she says in a statement provided via email. “It will also call out some of the elders (a.k.a. my cohort) who give advice that is outdated or doesn’t recognize that the financial and economic landscape has changed dramatically since they were starting their journeys.”
Schlesinger will continue to host a separate podcast, “Jill on Money,” in addition to “Money Moves.” She will be joined in the latter by Mark Talerico, a certified financial planner who is also her executive producer.
CBS News operates podcasts including “48 Hours: Case by Case.”
The new program, says Schlesinger, “is for people who want to take control of their financial lives, but also have fun along the way.”
