CBS Evening News loses over 1 million viewers in first week under Bari Weiss

CBS Evening News lost over 1 million viewers in its first week under new anchor TDTony Dokoupil, dropping from an average of 5.4 million viewers each day (Jan. 5-9, 2025) to only 4.17 million viewers (Jan. 5-9, 2026), a 23% decline according to Nielsen data reported by Variety. Viewership in the key 25-54 demographic that advertisers target fell from 690,000 to 533,000, a nearly 25% drop. Other anchors' debuts for the program typically got 5 million viewers or more. JDJohn Dickerson and MDMaurice DuBois averaged 4.91 million viewers in their debut week in Jan. 2025.

Trump-allied billionaire David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison bought CBS parent company Paramount in 2025. David Ellison installed far-right provocateur BWBari Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief in Oct. 2025 despite her having no experience managing a major news organization. Weiss previously ran a Substack newsletter called The Free Press and had a controversial tenure at The 🗽New York Times opinion section. Her inner circle of advisors reportedly includes SSSasha Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld's 25-year-old daughter with no journalism experience.

Weiss killed a 60 Minutes segment in Dec. 2025 that was scheduled to show brutal conditions within CECOT prison in El Salvador, where the Trump administration disappeared hundreds of immigrants. The segment, reported by veteran correspondent ACAnderson Cooper, was carefully vetted by CBS lawyers and standards and practices personnel. Weiss critiqued it for lack of balance and context, demanding high-level administration officials be contacted even though the administration had already been approached and declined to provide response. She couldn't dispute any specific factual assertions in the piece.

In a note to CBS Evening News producers obtained by The 🗽New York Times, Weiss said she wanted the network to be the news rather than report it. She told producers Let's make sure every single night has something with viral potential. The goal for this road show is not to deliver the news so much as it is to drive the news. This represents a fundamental departure from CBS News's traditional investigative journalism mission under Walter Cronkite's legacy.

TDTony Dokoupil's first week featured numerous right-wing guest interviewees and billionaires, with analysts noting his tonal shift favoring right-wing figures in the Trump orbit. His debut on Jan. 5 included stumbling over the teleprompter and introducing himself twice within 80 seconds. His Tuesday program featured a 13-minute interview with Trump at a Ford factory that was drowned out by machinery noise. At the end, Dokoupil made a forced appeal saying 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.

Weiss also killed a 60 Minutes segment from ACAnderson Cooper about Trump's exclusive asylum welcome for Afrikaner refugees. Just days after the El Salvador segment was killed, Weiss approved a thin, anonymous story about an ICE agent's alleged internal bleeding that hadn't been fact-checked to the same standard. The Free Press, the website owned by Paramount-Skydance that Weiss also controls, ran a rant from Weiss's wife defending the decision to drop the El Salvador piece. These editorial decisions show Weiss prioritizing pro-Trump narratives over investigative journalism.

CBS News has faced massive internal revolt since Weiss took over. The numerous public leaks about the 60 Minutes interference show CBS News staff's lack of respect for her leadership and management style. Many people were fired at CBS News before Weiss arrived and morale was already low. Weiss has made it worse but can't fire everyone, creating a real dilemma. CBS News is a much larger organization than anything she's ever managed. While Weiss puts guests like Erika Kirk on CBS airwaves to disastrous ratings, NBC Nightly News under Tom Llamas has been rising in ratings.

The ratings collapse matters because CBS Evening News competed with ABC News and NBC News for mainstream audiences—not Fox News, Newsmax, or right-wing podcasters. Weiss appears to misunderstand her competition and treat CBS like a minor league outlet. Trust in TV news has collapsed to an all-time low of 28% according to Gallup, down from 72% in 1976 and 40% in 2020. Weiss's pro-Trump pivot is accelerating audience flight to NBC and ABC while failing to attract Fox News viewers who already distrust CBS.