A MAGA CBS anchor’s short vacation led to his show getting the best ratings in months, according to a report.
CBS Evening News finally cracked more than 4 million viewers for the first time since March, according to reporting by Status. However, the show reached the solid ratings while its main anchor, Tony Dokoupil, was on a two-week summer vacation.
Ratings for CBS News programs have struggled during the summer. CBS Evening News plummeted below the 4 million viewer threshold in March as the network was undergoing a MAGA makeover under Bari Weiss. Meanwhile, CBS Mornings saw its lowest-rated week in the program’s history in July.
The flagship CBS News program, ‘60 Minutes,’ has gone through the most high-profile struggles, as it lost veteran correspondents such as Scott Pelley, Anderson Cooper, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, not to mention a slew of producers. CBS also cut The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this year as David Ellison, the owner of the network’s parent company, sought the Trump administration’s blessing for a merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and his company, Paramount Skydance.
CBS Evening News surpassed the 4 million mark last week, according to ratings published earlier this week. It marked the first time the program passed the benchmark since March.
However, Status noted one caveat. “The ratings victory was not Tony Dokoupil’s to claim,” as the ratings boost happened while he was gone. “Instead, it belonged to Matt Gutman, who has been substituting for Dokoupil while the anchor is out on a two-week summer vacation,” Status reported.
“During Gutman’s first week in the anchor chair in July, he averaged 4.1 million viewers,” Status reported after reviewing Nielsen ratings data. Gutman delivered “the best-rated week for the CBS Evening News in 17 weeks,” it pointed out.
Status credited Dokoupil’s summer vacation with handing CBS News an “unexpected and somewhat awkward result.”
Weiss installed Dokoupil as an anchor in January. He drew a staff revolt over the video manifestos he posted about “legacy media,” an on-air scolding from Donald Trump, and a public rebuke from Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) after the network aired a Trump interview. He was also mocked for confusing Kanye West with P. Diddy on air, and a pair of foreign assignments in Taiwan and China collapsed into logistical disasters.
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