A curious mock-up of the CBS Evening News studio promoting “Whiskey Fridays with Tony Dokoupil” wasn’t made for a televised segment, the network clarified.
Images of the studio, obtained by Zeteo News on Tuesday and Wednesday, showed a pub-like scene that included a banner suggesting that Tennessee whiskey brand Jack Daniel’s was a sponsor. But the network said the whole thing was “experimental.”
“This is not a segment for broadcast,” a CBS News spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “This is not a real title. This is not a real sponsor. And this is not a real story. This is simply an experimental mockup the graphics team created with placeholder text for a potential non-televised, in-person private event.”
A well-placed CBS source told Puck that it was an “an audience engagement idea” where Dokoupil would “engage directly with viewers in person after the show on Fridays.”
A Jack Daniel’s spokesperson had previously told the Daily Beast that the company was not sponsoring any whiskey-themed segment on CBS. That led to questions about programming on the nightly broadcast, which Dokoupil has led since last Monday, when he self-admittedly got off to a rocky start.
“At this point, how about whiskey everyday?” one network insider told Puck.
Dokoupil, 45, was named to the role by Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, the anti-woke opinion journalist who is aiming to turn CBS News into a more conservative-friendly outlet.
Before his first day in the anchor chair, Dokoupil pledged to be “more accountable” than even Walter Cronkite, his famed predecessor at CBS. In a video, he also railed against “legacy media” for taking “into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American” and putting “too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.”
Dokoupil would go on to fly in billionaire Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ helicopter the following week.
The former Daily Beast reporter lives in one of Brooklyn’s most expensive enclaves with his wife, MS NOW anchor Katy Tur. He attended a $53,000-a-year prep school in Florida, obtained his undergraduate degree from George Washington University, and then enrolled in a PhD program at Columbia University.
Preliminary Nielsen ratings for Dokoupil’s first week showed a steady decline day after day.
On Wednesday, Jan. 14, the network announced that at the beginning of this week, Dokoupil brought in 4.2 million viewers, 570,000 of whom were in the 25-54 demographic. The network said that’s an increase of five and 15 percent, respectively, compared to the season-to-date average.
But both figures are less than what Dokoupil’s Jan. 5 debut garnered.
