{"id":668593,"date":"2026-05-27T18:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/668593\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T18:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:58:10","slug":"tony-dokoupils-cbs-evening-news-ekes-out-4m-viewers-but-still-trails-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/668593\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Dokoupil’s ‘CBS Evening News’ ekes out 4M viewers but still trails rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Dokoupil\u2019s \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d eked out 4 million viewers for the first time in weeks \u2013 though the show remains firmly stuck <\/a>in third place behind its broadcast rivals.<\/p>\n

In the five-day period ended May 22, \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d raked in an audience of a little more than 4 million, according to Nielsen data. It also clinched 605,000 viewers in the coveted advertising demographic of people age 25 to 54.<\/p>\n

Dokoupil\u2019s nightly broadcast saw only 3.8 million viewers, 482,000 of them in the key advertising demo, the previous week.<\/p>\n

\u201cCBS Evening News\u201d anchor Tony Dokoupil has notched 4 million viewers, according to Nielsen data. CBS via Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sign that Dokoupil \u2013 whose time in the anchor chair got off to a rough start<\/a> in January with an awkward on-air blunder \u2013 is finally starting to make some viewership gains.<\/p>\n

But CBS News is still far behind its rivals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

David Muir\u2019s \u201cABC World News Tonight\u201d led broadcast ratings with 8.2 million viewers and 966,000 in the 25-54 demo in the week ended May 22.<\/p>\n

\u201cNBC Nightly News,\u201d anchored by Tom Llamas, notched 6.1 million total viewers, 867,000 of them in that demo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf barely scraping past 4 million viewers counts as success at CBS News these days, they may want to revisit the definition,\u201d an industry insider told The Post on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Dokoupil has been facing intense scrutiny since he stumbled through his first broadcast in January, tripping over a teleprompter change and leaving viewers with several seconds of dead air as he struggled to decide which segment to report.<\/p>\n

\u201cABC World News Tonight,\u201d hosted by David Muir, is the undisputed top nightly broadcast. Heidi Gutman\/ABC News<\/p>\n

His own colleagues bashed him as a \u201cuseful idiot\u201d and \u201cgood eye candy\u201d in a brutal Vanity Fair report published last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTony has the biggest case of imposter syndrome out of any anchor or correspondent I\u2019ve ever worked with,\u201d a former producer who worked with him told the mag, describing the anchor as out of his depth.<\/p>\n

\u201cNBC Nightly News\u201d host Tom Llamas is currently in second place among the major broadcast networks. NBC<\/p>\n

Insiders told Vanity Fair that Dokoupil was actually CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss<\/a>\u2019 \u201cseventh or eighth choice,\u201d after initially pursuing bigger names<\/a> like Bret Baier and Anderson Cooper.<\/p>\n

But a source close to the network told The Post that senior CBS News execs have attributed the recent ratings gains to the work of Dokoupil and his team, including his feature segments.<\/p>\n

CBS News has fallen below 4 million viewers on many weeknights, starting when it ran a version of its evening newscast with two anchors last year in a failed attempt to win over NBC News viewers while the rival transitioned from Lester Holt to Llamas.<\/p>\n

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But last week marks the fourth consecutive week of viewership growth for \u201cCBS Evening News,\u201d according to Nielsen. So far in May, the show has seen 4% more viewers than this time last year and 6% more in the key 24-54 demographic.<\/p>\n

\u201cABC World News Tonight\u201d remains the undisputed top nightly network news broadcast, according to Nielsen ratings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss reportedly looked for bigger names to take over the evening news desk. Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press<\/p>\n

Its lead over CBS News\u2019 evening show \u2013 by 4.3 million viewers \u2013 is its largest gain over the Tiffany Network in 34 years, since Nielsen started keeping records.<\/p>\n

ABC also holds its largest lead over NBC in more than 30 years, with nearly 2 million more viewers.<\/p>\n

\u201cNBC Nightly News,\u201d meanwhile, has notched its longest streak of viewership growth in the key advertising demo, closing in on ABC\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n

The network is also holding its largest total viewership lead over CBS in six years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Dokoupil\u2019s \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d eked out 4 million viewers for the first time in weeks \u2013 though…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[83583,61590,31746,88,10815,193069,100977,149597,92],"class_list":["post-668593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-abc-world-news-tonight","tag-cbs-evening-news","tag-david-muir","tag-entertainment","tag-media","tag-nbc-nightly-news","tag-tom-llamas","tag-tony-dokoupil","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668593","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=668593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}