CBS Evening News’ new anchor Tony Dokoupil has yet to move the ratings needle—at all.
Dokoupil’s second week leading the prime-time broadcast fared little better than his first, which saw the program trail its broadcast-network rivals, preliminary figures show.
During the week of Jan. 12–16, the broadcast averaged 4.2 million viewers, with just 584,000 tuning in from the key 25–54 demographic—the group most closely watched by advertisers—according to preliminary Nielsen data. That marked only a slight uptick from the 4.17 million viewers it averaged the previous week.
Overall ratings are down about 20 percent as compared to this time last year, when Norah O’Donnell anchored the show. Viewership among the key 25–54 demographic is down 19 percent year over year.
Other signature primetime news programs—ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News—delivered much stronger ratings than CBS, and had noticeably stronger viewership across the key demographic.
ABC World News Tonight with David Muir delivered the highest ratings in the key demographic, with an average of 8.2 million viewers watching the program, and 1.04 million viewers in the key demo tuning in. NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas averaged 6.7 million viewers, with 964,000 of the key demo watching the program on average over the course of the week.
Ratings for CBS’s 60 Minutes also took a nosedive even as the network finally aired its shelved segment on the notorious megaprison CECOT, where the Trump administration has been deporting people to.
As the news program competed with viewers during the NFL divisional playoffs, 60 Minutes drew just 4.9 million viewers on Jan. 18, marking the second time in the program’s 58-year history that the show had fewer than five million viewers, according to Status.
CBS News did not return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
CBS Evening News has been swarmed with controversy since MAGA-curious CBS boss Bari Weiss, who had no professional experience in TV news before assuming her new role, tapped Dokoupil to take over the anchor chair as she tries make the network more Trump-friendly.
Putting aside the poor ratings, Dokoupil, a former co-anchor on CBS Mornings, had a rough start to his new job. His debut broadcast was filled with gaffes and awkward moments as he frequently stumbled over the teleprompter.
Before taking over the anchor seat, he promised to be even “more accountable and more transparent” than Walter Cronkite, the iconic CBS anchor frequently referred to as “the most trusted man in America.”
Dokoupil also accused the “legacy media,” which he and his wife, MS Now anchor Katy Tur have been a part of for several years, of having “missed the story.”
The journalist, who lives in a four-floor townhouse in one of Brooklyn’s most exclusive enclaves and was educated at a $53,000-a-year prep school, also blasted the media for putting “too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.” The critique mirrored arguments Weiss has repeatedly made over the years.
On his first newscast after the first week of poor ratings were released, Dokoupil pleaded with viewers to take a chance on him leading the storied news program.
“You may not agree with everything you hear on this broadcast, but we trust you to listen, and we trust you to decide for yourself,” Dokoupil said, before taking a deep breath and signing off with his closing line, “And that’s another day in America.”
