News

As the owner of the Paramount movie studio, Viacom is often on the lookout for drama. Who knew its newest potboiler would come from one of the units it got paired with as a result of its merger with CBS?

CBS News is in the business of producing “60 Minutes” and “Face The Nation,” but in recent days the division has had its collective hands full with some kind of soap opera: Gayle King, one of its most prominent on-air journalists, was threatened online by Snoop Dogg as well as others after a snippet of an interview she conducted with Wnba player Lisa Leslie about the death of former basketball great Kobe Bryant went viral. The short clip that got passed around online, just one short exchange in a much longer interview, showed King asking Leslie about sexual-assault charges levied against Bryant in an earlier part of his career. After Snoop Dogg’s threats,...

With “Hang in There Girl,” Ashley McBryde concludes the felonious video trilogy she began with “One Night Standards” then followed with “Martha Divine.” The latest installment adds a few twists and turns including a mysterious coda that suggests there may be more to the tale (spoilers ahead).

A fist-pumping, crunchy-rock anthem of solidarity, “Hang in There Girl” finds McBryde empathizing with the song’s 15-year-old subject, who is “barely hangin’ on” in a trailer park on the other side of town. The chorus repeats the title phrase three times, followed by “it’ll be alright,...