CBS Fires Brad Kern, ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ Showrunner Accused of Misconduct

CBS Television Studios has fired a former showrunner of “NCIS: New Orleans” who had been under investigation for allegations of inappropriate behavior.

The former producer, Brad Kern, was terminated Monday, a spokeswoman for CBS Television Studios said in a statement.

“We have ended Brad Kern’s role as consulting producer on ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ and his overall deal with the studio,” according to the statement, which gave no further details.

Kern had been accused of misconduct ranging from mistreatment of women to racially insensitive comments, according to The Hollywood Reporter. A spokesman for Kern declined to comment Tuesday evening.

His firing comes during a broader cleanup at CBS, where a series of high-profile men have been ousted amid scandal, including Leslie Moonves, the longtime chief executive of the CBS Corp., who stepped down last month after he was accused of sexual harassment. The CBS Corp. also recently shook up its board of directors.

Scandal has battered the news division of CBS — with the firings of Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” and Charlie Rose, a host of “CBS This Morning” — and a television writer recently accused Moonves of fostering a misogynistic culture on the entertainment side of the business.

The writer, Linda Bloodworth Thomason, who created the CBS sitcom “Designing Women” in the 1980s, accused Moonves of loading the network with profitable, male-dominated television series, including crime shows like “NCIS.”

“He presided over a plethora of macho crime shows featuring a virtual genocide of dead naked hotties in morgue drawers, with sadistic female autopsy reports, ratcheted up each week,” she wrote in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter.

Kern became showrunner of “NCIS: New Orleans” in 2016. That year, CBS launched two internal investigations into his behavior, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Those complaints were resolved and, this year, CBS signed Kern to a new, two-year deal, the magazine reported in June.

But this summer, Kern moved to a consulting producer role and was also suspended. CBS hired an outside investigator to look into allegations of harassment, unprofessional conduct and vindictive behavior by Kern, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

A spokeswoman for CBS Television Studios on Tuesday declined to answer questions about the investigation or Kern’s firing.