A lot of people are talking about the revamped “CBS Evening News” under new anchor Tony Dokoupil, but it’s not enough for the show to win unconditional ratings in its first week.
Overall ratings for Mr. Dokoupil’s first five official days on the venerable CBS News program were down 23% from a year ago, when then-anchor Norah O’Donnell was ushering viewers through the tumultuous news of California’s wildfires and President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Dokoupil’s average winnings in his first five days (January 5 to January 9) were about $4.17 million, compared to about $5.4 million in the same period last year, according to Nielsen data.
Viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, the demographic most favored by news advertisers, also fell by 23%, according to Nielsen data. Dokoupil averaged 533,000 catches in the first five days, compared to 690,000 the year before.
Those numbers pale in comparison to the results of ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “NBC Nightly News,” which drew about 8.1 million and 6.73 million viewers overall, respectively.
NBC News also won the evening news scrum last week. Tom Lamas’ “Nightly News” beat David Muir’s “World News Tonight” in 3,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic. It’s the first time since Rama took over as anchor in 2025 that a news program drew more viewers in its category than ABC’s programs in a week. NBC won three days in viewership last week, compared to two days for ABC, according to a person familiar with the show.
The results show just how difficult the situation is for CBS News and its new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss. The country’s three main broadcast evening news programs still have large audiences, but their audience is primarily older and their audience breadth is not widening. Younger audiences are more likely to get their information from social media, digital media, and other new technology outlets. Nevertheless, the more changes networks try to make to their evening newscasts, the more they risk alienating their current viewers while providing less to talk about for the viewers they hope to attract.
Mr. Weiss is betting on Mr. Dokoupil to lead a broadcast that is clearly different from the past. CBS News completely overhauled its Evening News format and hired two anchors, Maurice Dubois and John Dickerson. However, this format proved to be unwieldy, and a significant portion of the audience turned away from the show. Dokoupil has been an avid anchor in recent days in Miami and Denver, but he has also stumbled over his words on his first official weekday TV show and drifted off at certain points, including an awkward segment in which he tried to justify changes to U.S. vaccine policy and the shooting death of a woman in Minneapolis by federal agents.
All of this comes as CBS News’ parent company, Paramount Skydance, tries to make the case to Warner Bros. Discovery that it is the right custodian of properties such as CNN and HBO.
CBS News is pleased with the attention Dokopil has garnered among the digital crowd. Over the past 7 days, the total time spent watching CBS Evening News videos on YouTube has increased by 58% compared to the weekly average in 2025.
Still, Dokoupil’s first week debut was milder than his predecessor. Dubois and Dickerson averaged nearly 4.82 million catches during the first week of 2025. Jeff Grow has caught over 7 million fish. Additionally, Norah O’Donnell averaged 5.24 million viewers and Scott Perry averaged approximately 5.72 million viewers overall.
