CBS Evening News ratings drop below 4M for first time with Tony Dokoupil in the anchor chair after Bari Weiss overhaul

Ratings for CBS Evening News have dropped below four million for the first time since host Tony Dokoupil took the helm after editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’ overhaul of the network.

The revamp of the nightly news program kicked off to a rough start in January. During his first regular broadcast, Dokoupil ran into some technical issues while switching between segments.

One network staffer at the time told The Independent Dokoupil’s debut as the new host of CBS Evening News, which included social media clips of him asking random people at a train station to pronounce his last name, was “embarrassing.”

The first week of ratings for the nightly news program with Dokoupil in the anchor chair averaged nearly 4.17 million total viewers and 533,000 in the key demographic of adults aged 25 to 54, according to Nielsen Media Research data cited in several outlets.

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Despite the 23 percent dip in total viewership ratings from the same period in 2025, according to Deadline and Variety, CBS News touted it as a victory, saying it was up 4 percent in total viewership compared to the rest of the season, which started in September.

But now, ratings have slipped below 4 million again. The show had a total viewership of nearly 3.83 million and 468,000 among 25 to 54 year olds last week, Variety reported, citing Nielsen data.

Variety reports the network scrapped the CBS Evening News anchored by Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson after the program shed audience and fell below 4 million viewers on many weeknights.

Dokoupil’s ratings lagged behind ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir, which had a total audience of nearly 8.48 million last week, and NBC’s Nightly News with Tom Llamas, which saw 6.51 million total viewers, according to Nielsen.

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Weiss, who founded the so-called anti-woke media outlet The Free Press, took over as CBS News’ editor-in-chief last October.

Dokoupil replaced evening news co-anchors Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson soon after, as one of several changes to the network under Weiss’ leadership.

One network staffer told The Independent Dokoupil had turned CBS Evening News into “state TV.”

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President Donald Trump told Dokoupil on the program that he “wouldn’t have a job right now” if former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris won the 2024 presidential election.

Weiss also sparked backlash for her decision to pull a 60 Minutes segment about Venezuelan migrants sent from the U.S. to CECOT, an El Salvadoran prison accused of having inhumane conditions. The segment ended up airing nearly one month later.

In reaction to last week’s ratings drop, Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, wrote on X, “If people want conservative slant, they can watch Fox or Newsmax. People don’t want broadcast news to slant one way or the other. They just want news.”