Tony Dokoupil’s ratings crisis at CBS Evening News is spiraling as viewer figures hit free-fall mode.
Dokoupil became the de facto face of the new regime when MAGA-friendly Bari Weiss was installed as the boss of CBS News, despite having no broadcast experience. She promoted Dokoupil from CBS Mornings to the prime-time slot.
Ratings, however, have been poor from the get-go, and new data from media analytics firm Nielsen paints a bleak picture. Fresh numbers show that the show averaged just 3.85 million viewers last week, well below the industry-recognized benchmark of four million.
The data obtained by Status also shows that the program is faltering among a key demographic. Among the coveted 25-54 age group, it averaged just 539,000, below the psychological floor of 600,000.
Advertisers are laser-focused on this group because of its disposable income, propensity to spend it, and the potential for its members to switch between brands.
Advertisers probably watched through their fingers, then, when Dokoupil declared “first day, big problems here,” when his teleprompter text went awry, causing an excruciating blip during his maiden show back in January.
Programming has never really recovered. The new data, from the week beginning on April 27, is part of a broader theme. It is the fourth consecutive week the show’s ratings tanked below the four million benchmark, and the thirteenth time it has failed to produce over 600,000 viewers in the 25-54 age group.
There is a faint glimmer of hope when the year-over-year data is pulled up. In that regard, it is up seven percent when compared with the show under John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.
A source told the New York Post that Dokoupil doesn’t stand out against the big dogs in the industry. “You can’t do David Muir lite,” the source said. “When s–-t hits the fan, CBS doesn’t have heavyweights like [ABC’s] Martha Raddatz, Pierre Thomas or Jonathan Karl.”
The programming designed by higher-ups doesn’t help, either. The network’s president, Tom Cibrowski, and CBS Evening News executive producer Kim Harvey take a “dim view of the American people” and think they want “zero substance,” but in reality, they are “demanding information,” another source told the Post.
Dokoupil rankled CBS News staffers before he even took the hot seat. He posted a video in January accusing the “legacy media” of having “missed the story” by putting “too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.”
The video was not well-received in the CBS newsroom, according to a report in Vanity Fair. “I just don’t even understand how you could say something like that,” said one former CBS executive who worked closely with Dokoupil. “He completely lost the room.”
CBS News has been asked to comment on the ratings.
