{"id":666861,"date":"2026-05-26T22:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T22:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/666861\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T22:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T22:27:08","slug":"cbs-evening-news-back-over-4-million-viewers-for-first-time-in-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/666861\/","title":{"rendered":"‘CBS Evening News’ Back Over 4 Million Viewers for First Time in Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTony Dokoupil<\/a> is pushing back.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u201cCBS Evening News<\/a>\u201d anchor, who has been under intense scrutiny <\/a>since taking the role in early January, led the signature CBS newscast to an audience of a little more than 4 million during the five-day period ended May 22, according to Nielsen \u2014 the first time in weeks the show has captured that level of audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe program also notched 605,000 viewers in the advertiser-favorite demographic of people between 25 and 54. The previous week\u2019s \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d captured around 3.8 million viewers and 482,000 in the demographic.<\/p>\n

\n\tMake no mistake: \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d remains well behind its two main rivals, ABC\u2019s \u201cWorld News Tonight\u201d and NBC\u2019s \u201cNBC Nightly News.\u201d But at least it\u2019s showing signs of regaining some ground. <\/p>\n

\n\tABC\u2019s \u201cWorld News Tonight\u201d continues to lead the sector handily, with nearly 8.2 million overall viewers and 966,000 in the demo. \u201cNBC Nightly News\u201d won nearly 6.1 million viewers, and 867,000 in the demo.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ratings for last week appear to be based on four days of broadcasts. ABC and NBC each \u201cretitled\u201d one of the five days\u2019 of broadcasts last week, and it was not immediately clear whether CBS had as well, though it usually drops Fridays from its tabulations. Networks \u201cretitle\u201d specific episodes of their nightly-news programs when they believe some outside factors, like a sports telecast or lower-than-usual viewership will affect the Nielsen measurement of viewership.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe four-million-viewer level has been seen as something of a demarcation point in recent months. <\/a>Before Dokoupil took the reins of the show, CBS News ran a version of \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d anchored by Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson<\/a>, hoping that a two-anchor format might generate new interest as Lester Holt ceded the reins of NBC\u2019s \u201cNightly\u201d to Tom Llamas, <\/a>It didn\u2019t, and the CBS show shed audience and fell below 4 million viewers on many weeknights.<\/p>\n

\n\tDokoupil had gained traction over the years during his time as a co-anchor on \u201cCBS Mornings,\u201d and he won the notice of both former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky and current CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss. He has demonstrated a proclivity for developing interesting features, and, more recently, for taking on author Ta-Nehisi Coates\u00a0on whether his writing expressed antipathy for Israel<\/a>. He has also tried to imbue the evening newscast with a more writerly voice, and has hustled across the nation and to global hot spots in the earliest part of his tenure on the program.<\/p>\n

\n\t Last week\u2019s \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d telecast included the start of \u201cAffordability in America,\u201d a new series that examines how Americans are coping with rising prices and economic uncertainty. Senior executives attribute the viewer upswing in part, according to a person familiar with the matter, to viewers noticing more of the work of Dokoupil, executive producer Kim Harvey and the rest of the evening newscast production team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Dokoupil is pushing back. The \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d anchor, who has been under intense scrutiny since taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[61590,88,149597,92],"class_list":["post-666861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-cbs-evening-news","tag-entertainment","tag-tony-dokoupil","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}