TUNING OUT

MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Hit With Devastating ’60 Minutes’ Blow

The once-iconic program keeps bleeding viewers.

60 Minutes sank to a new low with its latest ratings reveal.

Sunday’s broadcast captured just 5.64 million viewers, according to Nielsen data obtained by Variety.

The ratings are one of the smallest audiences the legacy CBS News show has pulled in years, following a continuing downward trend for the program.

A paltry 558,000 of those viewers were age 25-54. That’s down from 767,000 just two weeks earlier. This deep into a season, the show hadn’t cratered below 1 million in that bracket since 2000.

Compared with the same week last year, the show lost 60 percent of its total audience. Among the key demo for advertisers, the drop was a jaw-dropping 81 percent.

As of Tuesday evening, CBS hadn’t released the Nielsen figures, and CBS News refused to offer up any executives to Variety to discuss them. Four sources with knowledge of the data confirmed the numbers to the trade outlet.

The embarrassment didn’t stop at the raw totals. 60 Minutes normally wins Sunday night among non-sports shows on broadcast TV. This week it got beaten by two of CBS’ own scripted dramas: Tracker and Marshals.

CBS has a ready excuse. When the show tanked earlier this month, a source familiar with the ratings told the Daily Beast the network had braced for a drop-off because Fox had the late NFL game. Sunday’s episode was in the same boat. But the show exists partly to carry football fans into the rest of CBS’ Sunday lineup, so a weak 60 Minutes signals a problem for the network and its parent, Paramount Skydance.

The popularity dip is becoming a habit for the program. The season premiere in September, the first under CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, 42, pulled in about 7.94 million viewers. That was the smallest opener since at least the turn of the century, even with sports at the helm with a strong NFL lead-in.

DISASTER

MAGA-Coded CBS Boss Suffers Fresh ‘60 Minutes’ Blow

Annabella Rosciglione

On Oct. 10, the fourth episode of the season drew 6.06 million viewers, crashing into another milestone with the worst-rated fourth installment since 2000.

Weiss, a former opinion writer who later founded the ‘anti-woke’ outlet The Free Press, was installed as CBS News editor-in-chief late last year. Weiss had never worked in the TV news game before.

Her rise came after Paramount Skydance, run by David Ellison, 43, son of billionaire Trump donor Larry Ellison, paid $150 million for her “anti-woke” outlet The Free Press. The Financial Times reported in 2025 that she won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance.

In a New York Times guest essay in August, the Paramount Skydance CEO insisted he had no desire to make his newsrooms “bend” to his views, and claimed that kind of independence “has always fueled the greatness of ‘60 Minutes.’”

ANOTHER CECOT

MAGA Curious CBS Boss ‘Meddled’ in Another Show’s Report

William Vaillancourt

But the essay was really a pitch to sell his $111 billion bid to buy out CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. A dozen states are suing to kill the deal. Ellison claimed critics simply didn’t trust him with CNN. However, according to the Guardian, he and his father promised the Trump administration friendlier pro-MAGA coverage.

When Weiss was installed, she took a blunt ax to the 60 Minutes team. Longtime executive producer Tanya Simon was pushed aside for Nick Bilton, a journalist and screenwriter with hardly any broadcast experience.

The network fired correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Scott Pelley voiced concerns about where the show was headed. Within hours, he was out. Anderson Cooper, a 60 Minutes correspondent for 20 years, walked.

In their place came conservative commentator Ross Douthat, along with contributors like Ariel Levy and Sebastian Junger. Variety said the newcomers have impressive résumés but little experience on a long-form investigative weekly TV show.

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Sunday’s episode investigated the Trump administration deporting people to countries they have no ties to, some of whom were then sent back to the places they fled. It echoed Alfonsi’s report on CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison, which Weiss shelved at the last minute, setting off open warfare inside the show.

The episode also featured Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and election-denying Mesa Country clerk Tina Peters, who was sentenced to jail for interfering with election machines but pardoned by Polis in May after pressure from President Donald Trump. Peters is grilled on the show by Bill Whitaker, but is unrepentant.

The Daily Beast has contacted CBS News for comment.

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