The new-look CBS Evening News is on track for its least-viewed January since at least the turn of the millennium.
Nielsen data obtained by the New York Post show that newly installed anchor Tony Dokoupil hasn’t delivered in the ratings department, despite having marketed himself as “more accountable and more transparent” than Walter Cronkite.
Since Dokoupil’s debut on Jan. 5, CBS’s evening show has brought in an average of 4.3 million viewers per night, 560,000 of whom are between 25 and 54 years old—its lowest-rated January since at least 2000.
Overall ratings are down approximately 20 percent from this time last year, when Norah O’Donnell hosted the show.
Representatives for CBS News did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
The network previously announced one bright spot: that its Jan. 19 evening show brought in its “largest audience for the broadcast since 2021,” with 6.4 million viewers.
But overall, the CBS Evening News has work to do.
In his first four days on the job, Dokoupil lost as much as a fifth of the key 25-54 demographic. Overall viewership has steadily declined: 4.3 million people tuned in on Monday, 4.1 million on Wednesday, and 3.9 million on Thursday.
Week two was also lackluster. Ratings for the CBS evening show were down 20 percent from the same period in 2025, and the figure was 19 percent in the key demographic. Whereas CBS drew 4.2 million viewers on average, rival stations ABC and NBC amassed 8.2 million and 6.8 million viewers, respectively.
Nielsen data also indicates struggles for other CBS programs like CBS Mornings, which is headed for its lowest-rated month to date, and CBS Saturday Morning, which is on track for its worst January. Additionally, Late Night with Stephen Colbert, which ends in May, averaged just 285,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic, which would be its worst January.
Dokoupil, who had a subpar opening night, introduced himself to viewers on New Year’s Day by criticizing the “legacy media” for having “missed the story” for taking “into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American,” and for putting “too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.”
Dokoupil’s comment echoed some of the opinions of CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who was appointed to the role by billionaire nepo-baby David Ellison to make the network more attractive to conservatives.
Dokoupil, his MS Now anchor wife Katy Tur, and their two children live in a three-story townhouse in one of Brooklyn’s most exclusive enclaves.
Dokoupil, a former Daily Beast reporter, attended a $53,000 prep school in Florida, George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia University, where he enrolled in a PhD program but did not complete it.
