By Sharon Zhang
This text was initially printed by Truthout
The plunge in viewership comes as Weiss has ushered in an period of Trump-friendly politics for the community.
CBS’s “Night Information” program misplaced over 1,000,000 viewers in its first week underneath its new anchor, Tony Dokoupil, in comparison with the identical interval final 12 months, marking a pointy loss for the community after the community’s billionaire house owners put in far proper provocateur Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief in October.
Knowledge from media viewers measurement agency Nielsen exhibits that the present misplaced practically 1 / 4 of its viewership within the first 5 days of Dokoupil taking on this system, from January 5 to January 9, in comparison with the identical interval final 12 months.
Whereas this system had a median of 5.4 million viewers every day over that interval final 12 months, Selection reviews, solely about 4.17 million watched this system this 12 months. Different earlier anchors’ debuts for this system have gotten roughly 5 million viewers or extra, Selection factors out.
Viewership between the ages of 25 to 54, which advertisers view as their prime viewers in information applications, additionally fell by practically 1 / 4, plummeting from 690,000 final 12 months to 533,000, the info confirmed.
Dokoupil was promoted to anchor of the present, beforehand hosted by Norah O’Donnell, as the favored voice of President Donald Trump’s fascist motion after Weiss was reportedly unable to land Fox Information’s Bret Baier.
The plunge in viewership comes as Weiss has ushered in a far proper, Trump-favoring pivot for the community.
Weiss’s quick tenure has already been marked with quite a few scandals, together with a call in December to abruptly cancel a broadcast of 60 Minutes that was slated to point out “brutal” circumstances inside the El Salvador jail into which the Trump administration has disappeared a whole lot of immigrants.
In simply his first weeks, in the meantime, Dokoupil has invited quite a few right-wing visitor interviewees and billionaires to talk on this system, and analysts have famous his tonal shift in favoring right-wing figures, particularly these within the Trump orbit.
Final week, simply days after the Trump administration bombarded Venezuela and illegally kidnapped its president, Dokoupil had a phase sharing light-hearted AI photos product of Secretary of State Marco Rubio dressed up in several outfits — together with one the place he’s dressed because the “new Shah of Iran” — riffing off of Rubio’s many roles inside the administration.
“No matter you consider his politics, you’ve received to confess, it’s a formidable résumé,” he stated. “Marco Rubio, we salute you.” The phase was posted on-line by the White Home in approval.
Previous to getting the job, Dokoupil had made headlines beforehand for making hostile, racist feedback in an interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2024 in a line of questioning concerning the Palestine part of Coates’s guide, The Message. CBS reprimanded him for the feedback on the time.
Weiss has apparently relished within the scandals, even when viewership of one of many community’s high information exhibits has taken a success. In a notice to “CBS Night Information” producers forward of Dokoupil’s tour of the U.S., which has kicked off his tenure on this system, she apparently advised employees that she wished the community to “be the information,” quite than report it.
“Let’s make sure that each single night time has one thing with viral potential,” Weiss stated in a notice to producers obtained by The New York Occasions. “The objective for this street present is to not ship the information a lot as it’s to *drive the information*.”
This article was initially printed by Truthout and is licensed underneath Inventive Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please preserve all hyperlinks and credit in accordance with our republishing tips.
