‘CBS Evening News’ has more than 4 million viewers for the first time in weeks
Tony Dokoupil pushes back.
The CBS Evening News host, who has been under intense scrutiny since taking on the role in early January, guided the signature CBS newscast to an audience of just over 4 million people during the five-day period ending May 22, according to Nielsen — the first time in weeks the show reached that audience.
The program also attracted 605,000 viewers in advertisers’ preferred target group of people aged 25 to 54. Last week’s “CBS Evening News” drew about 3.8 million viewers and 482,000 in the demographic.
Make no mistake: “CBS Evening News” lags far behind its two main rivals, ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “NBC Nightly News.” But at least it shows signs of reclaiming ground.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” continues to lead the industry, with nearly 8.2 million total viewers and 966,000 in the demo. “NBC Nightly News” gained nearly 6.1 million viewers, and 867,000 in the demo.
Last week’s viewing figures appear to be based on four days of broadcasts. ABC and NBC each retitled one of the five days of broadcasts last week, and it was not immediately clear whether CBS had done so as well, although Fridays are usually dropped from the tabulations. Networks retitle specific episodes of their nightly news programs if they believe external factors, such as a sports broadcast or lower-than-normal viewership, will affect the Nielsen viewership measurement.
The level of four million viewers has been seen as a kind of limit point in recent months. Before Dokoupil took the reins of the show, CBS News released a version of “CBS Evening News,” anchored by Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson, hoping that a two-anchor format could generate new interest if Lester Holt hands over the reins of NBC’s “Nightly” to Tom Llamas. That didn’t happen, and the CBS show lost a lot of audience, dropping below 4 million viewers on many weeknights.
Dokoupil had gained popularity over the years during his time as co-host of “CBS Mornings,” gaining the attention of both former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky and current CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. He has shown a tendency to develop interesting features, and, more recently, to challenge author Ta-Nehisi Coates on whether his writing expressed antipathy for Israel. He has also tried to infuse the evening news with a more writerly voice, traveling across the country and to global hotspots in the early part of his tenure on the program.
Last week’s CBS Evening News broadcast included the start of “Affordability in America,” a new series examining how Americans are coping with rising prices and economic uncertainty. Senior executives attribute the viewership increase in part, according to a person familiar with the matter, to viewers noticing more of the work of Dokoupil, executive producer Kim Harvey and the rest of the evening news production team.
