Faced with shrinking ratings and revenue, CBS News is moving its morning program out of its Times Square Studio.
Later this year, “CBS Mornings” will head back to the news division’s broadcast center on the West Side of Manhattan, according to two people familiar with the plans who were not authorized to comment publicly.
The program, co-hosted by Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson, has broadcast from a facility on Broadway since September 2021. The move from the CBS Broadcast Center to the space once home to MTV’s “Total Request Live” coincided with a new name and breezier tone for the program formerly called “CBS This Morning.”
A representative for CBS News declined comment. The planned move was first reported by the New York Post.
“CBS Mornings” is the second program planning a departure from Times Square. ABC’s “Good Morning America,” located in a studio across the street from the CBS space, is moving to Disney’s new New York headquarters in Lower Manhattan in June.
Both CBS and ABC moved their morning programs to Times Square in an effort to match NBC’s “Today,” which launched a street-level studio in Rockefeller Plaza in 1994.
Tourists from around the country gather outside the NBC studio every morning. “Today” ratings perennially shoot up in December after the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza goes up.
Neither ABC or CBS have been able to generate the same kind of enthusiasm at their studio sites.
For CBS, the retreat from Times Square comes at a time when the news division faces a number of challenges.
The network is involved in a legal battle with President Trump, who filed a $20-billion lawsuit against the network over a 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump claims the interview was deceptively edited to make Harris appear more coherent and decisive. CBS has denied any wrongdoing and asked that the suit be dismissed.
The lawsuit has muddied CBS parent Paramount Global’s plan for an $8-billion merger with Skydance Media. The news division has fought Paramount Global Chairwoman Shari Redstone’s desire to settle the case so the deal can move forward.
The network is also seeing its new iteration of the “CBS Evening News” struggle in the ratings. The program led bytwo co-anchors, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, is drawing around 4 million viewers, making it a distant third behind “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” and “NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt.”
On Tuesday, “CBS Evening News” was topped in the ratings by “Special Report With Bret Baier” on Fox News, which is only available in homes with pay TV.
“CBS Mornings” improved its share of morning viewers in recent years but has been unable to climb out of third place behind ABC and NBC. Although the morning programs remain the profit centers of the network news divisions, they have all faced audience erosion as consumers have moved away from traditional TV.
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