On Thursday, amid news of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal that could herald the end of the war in Gaza, Bari Weiss presented her new charges at CBS News with a pitch: a roundtable discussion about the news with former U.S. secretaries of State. The idea, I’m told, seemed too ambitious to some network veterans given the booking requirements—until Bari began texting the ex-secretaries during the meeting to try to set her plan into motion. By the afternoon, as The New York Times, Semafor, and others reported, Bari had tentative agreements in place. On Friday morning, CBS announced that former Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell would moderate a discussion with Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice that would air on the news network’s streaming channel that afternoon.

Sure, this wasn’t exactly Tesla-level innovation, nor did it yield M*A*S*H finale–level ratings boom, but it made an impression in an industry that increasingly relies on the same always-available green room denizens to provide color commentary. In recent years, CBS News has been a network frequently beset by bureaucratic lethargy, excessive handwringing, and a dearth of creative thinking—all of which has contributed to a steady slide in ratings for the already perennially third-place network. In her first week at the helm, network sources said that Bari has shown an eagerness to move fast and be ambitious. For her, booking big guests probably seemed like table stakes. Isn’t this what news networks are supposed to do?

Bari is also expected to make some big programming changes, which will almost certainly begin at Evening News. Like most of the industry, the new Paramount front office was perplexed by the previous regime’s decision to overhaul the single-anchor format, replace Norah with John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, and pivot away from daily news toward enterprise-y newsmagazine stories more suited to a show like 60 Minutes. The brainlessness of that decision was quickly borne out by the ratings, which now often register below 4 million viewers a night. As I reported months ago, undoing that damage has always been part of Paramount’s plan.

Bari hasn’t had any formal discussions about Evening News or approached any talent, but that hasn’t stopped the respective camps from jockeying for position in the press. Given the depleted CBS News bench, there are really only two obvious candidates: Norah, who could return from her Barbara Walters–style sinecure to the chair she never wanted to leave, or Tony Dokoupil, an all-position player who, like Norah before him, may see his current morning show assignment as a stop on the path toward Walter Cronkite’s chair. (Coincidentally, Cronkite was also a CBS morning anchor first.) Similar posturing is likely to happen at CBS Mornings, Face the Nation, and 60 Minutes—all of which are vulnerable to disruption.

Disruption is a relative term, of course. One of Bari’s great tests will be balancing the instinct for innovation with an appreciation for the unique requirements of the format. As broken as television news often seems, it still requires a certain institutional knowledge. Meanwhile, one benefit of bestowing these jobs on veterans like Norah and Tony is that, beyond institutional memory, they’d also be beholden to her. And let’s face it, the real marquee star of CBS’s Bari era will be Bari.

There’s ample need for changes off-camera, too. On Friday, Bari sent out a companywide memo asking every single employee to submit a note explaining how they spend their work hours, what they’re proud of, and what they think the network could be doing better. “I’ll read all of them carefully,” she wrote.

Indeed, this seems like a smart and efficient way for Weiss to wrap her arms around a large organization while she’s still figuring out where the bathrooms are. At the same time, with layoffs looming over the news division as part of Paramount’s broader quest for efficiencies, it’s impossible for the rank and file not to view this as an expedited way to determine who’s expendable. (On Friday, the Writers Guild of America sent an email to members telling them not to respond to Bari’s email until she clarified its purpose.) As I reported the other week, layoffs could affect as many as a hundred staffers at the news division. Let’s hope that none of the respondents discuss their passion for mentorship—that’s usually where the queue for the guillotine starts.

Meanwhile, Bari’s most important relationship at CBS News is with its president, Tom Cibrowski. Historically, running a television news network has required three skillsets: relative business savvy, or at least an ability to manage the books; talent wrangling; and a real instinct for what drives attention. Bari brings only the latter to the equation, which has led some industry veterans to predict that her tenure atop CBS News will go the way of Chris Licht’s at CNN. (Licht, of course, was only a programmer.) And because she reports directly to Skydance-Paramount chief David Ellison, those same veterans have predicted a looming catastrophe the moment Bari and Tom’s interests fall out of alignment. To date, however, Tom has been among Bari’s most earnest cheerleaders. For all the premature schadenfreude, there is a possibility that these two end up working hand-in-glove, with very satisfying results.

Bari may be quite happy to leave the business and talent management to Tom. One underappreciated aspect of her anointment is that, while it has been very traumatic for her critics, she may actually see it as the least significant aspect of the deal. After all, the Ellisons gave her generational wealth and a massive platform upon which to keep growing The Free Press. Trying to inject some life into a dying linear network may have been the tax on all that. But one advantage of not caring too much is that you’re less cautious about taking big swings.