Mr. Moonves did not reach the heights of the television industry without knowing how to navigate the terrain and guard his turf. Days after the first New Yorker exposé appeared online in late July, he put on a brave face, dining with his wife, the CBS host Julie Chen, at Nobu Malibu, a hot spot for Hollywood executives.

With that showing, he was apparently hoping to convince his fellow power players that he was unrattled, that nothing had changed, that he was not going to come undone in the manner of other influential men — Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Roger Ailes — who had lost their positions after facing similar accusations.

The first of Mr. Farrow’s articles included on-the-record accusations from six women in the entertainment industry, among them the actress Illeana Douglas. It only wounded Mr. Moonves, with few people in the business willing to pronounce his career dead until there was absolutely no doubt. In a late August interview with The New York Times, for instance, Candice Bergen, the star of the recently rebooted CBS sitcom “Murphy Brown,” said, “I would really hate to see Les go.”

By Sunday night, however, hours after the publication of the second New Yorker article, which included detailed allegations from six more women, the executive had lost whatever support he may have had, and there was nothing he could do to save his career.

Mr. Moonves, 68, grew up in Valley Stream on Long Island. His father ran a gas station. He began his career in the 1970s on the other side of the camera, playing a heavy on “The Six Million Dollar Man” and a Mexican pearl diver on “Cannon.” But the life of an actor, which depends on the decisions of others, was not for him.