CBS Evening News’ new MAGA-coded anchor Tony Dokoupil suffered a ratings plunge on his first four nights on the job, new figures have revealed.
He lost as much as a fifth of the most important part of his audience between his first show on Monday Jan. 5 and Thursday Jan. 8.
Dokoupil was given the anchor seat once held by Walter Cronkite by new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, herself a controversial figure who was installed in the job by CBS’ new owner, billionaire nepo-baby David Ellison.
On Tuesday the network said he would interview the ultimate MAGA figure, Donald Trump, after using a bogus Trump claim as fact on air on his second week in the job.
Dokoupil had a rough first performance in the primetime slot on Monday Jan. 5 as he stumbled over the teleprompter and introduced himself twice in under two minutes. The broadcast saw several seconds of dead air between segment transitions.
According to Nielsen’s preliminary measurement obtained by the Daily Beast, Dokoupil drew in more than 4.4 million total viewers for his first show.
But ratings for the program steadily declined as the week went on. On Tuesday, 4.3 million total people tuned in, 4.1 million on Wednesday, and 3.9 million on Thursday—an 11.4% loss over the week.
More worryingly for CBS bosses, ratings in the key 25-54 demographic, which TV advertisers closely watch, were down 19.44% from Monday to Thursday.
Monday saw 607,000 people in the demo tune in, Tuesday saw 570,000 viewers, Wednesday saw 543,000 viewers, and Thursday saw just 489,000, according to Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurement.
CBS News did not return The Daily Beast’s requests for comment.
To kick off his new role as anchor, Dokoupil had been slated to embark on a 10-city U.S. tour via private jet to “meet Americans face to face,” but the cross-country tour was rescheduled due to the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela.
The other signature primetime news programs — ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News — drew in significantly more viewers in the key demographic than CBS Evening News.
NBC Nightly News delivered the strongest ratings in the key demographic among the broadcast networks, with 1.1 million viewers on Monday. And while it fell to 1.05 million on Tuesday, 1.07 million on Wednesday, and 905,000 on Thursday the percentage loss was much lower than CBS’.
A source told the Daily Beast that NBC Nightly News Tuesday ratings in the key demographic versus ABC World News Tonight’s ratings were the best since anchor Tom Llamas took over Nightly News from Lester Holt last year—suggesting that it had not lost any viewers to CBS.
And ABC World News Tonight actually gained viewers in the key demographic as the week progressed. It started with 1.015 million views Monday, 934,000 viewers Tuesday, and 1.062 million viewers Wednesday, and 1.02 million on Thursday.
Across all audiences, ABC World News Tonight had the most viewers on average, with 8.2 million over the week, and NBC Nightly News had an average of 6.9 million viewers last week. CBS Evening News had an average of 4.2 million total viewers across the week.
Dokoupil, formerly a co-anchor on CBS Mornings, set out his agenda in a New Year’s Day video published before his first broadcast as anchor, promising to be “more accountable and more transparent” than even Cronkite.
He accused the “legacy media” of having “missed the story” for taking “into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American,” or “too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.” His claim here closely mirrors many critiques that Weiss’s The Free Press, and Weiss herself, has made over the years.
When not burnishing his anti-elitist credentials, he and his wife—MS Now anchor Katy Tur—share a three-story townhouse in one of Brooklyn’s most exclusive enclaves, where he starts the day by making her coffee with oat milk and eggs with za’atar. He was educated at a $53,000-a-year prep school, attended George Washington University and Columbia University, where he did not complete a PhD. Earlier this month he railed against “the academy.”
Television industry insiders are already comparing Weiss to Chris Licht, the short-lived CNN boss who began his tenure in February 2022 with orders to move it to the right and by telling his staff people had “lost trust in the news media.” He then made efforts to reach Republican viewers, telling people he was there to “save journalism.” But a disastrous town hall with Trump, in front of an audience packed with Trump supporters, caused a rebellion among the network’s stars.
He was fired in June 2023 after he took part in an interview with The Atlantic in which he accused his own reporters of being anti-Trump and on “a mission…to go after this guy.”
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