The New York Post had a juicy scoop Thursday about the newly formatted CBS Evening News – with new co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois and fewer-but-more-in-depth stories – has been such a failure in just four weeks they’re crying uncle.
Media reporter Alexandra Steigrad revealed CBS “is reverting to a more news-driven broadcast as ratings tumble” and backing up last week’s reporting from Puck’s Dylan Byers that the more sedate and mini-60 Minutes-like format suffered a huge blow when the February 11 show led off with over six-minutes on America’s education system instead of Elon Musk’s tour de force media Q&A in the Oval office.
Steigrad explained:
“They’ve realized they can’t ignore the news,” said an industry insider of the third-place show. “You can’t really ignore the tsunami of news that is coming out of the White House and Washington.”
The new format was the brainchild of CBS News CEO and president Wendy McMahon, who wanted to shake up the perennially third-place program anchored by O’Donnell for the past five years.
The knives came out with Steigard saying Dickerson and DuBois have “been widely panned by current and former CBS News employees” with one describing Dickerson as “a deer in the headlines” while “another said former WCBS anchor DuBois is a ‘complete unknown’ to anyone outside the New York City market.”
One source said only Dickerson has any “credibility”…but that’s only “political reporting.” Otherwise, this source argued, they have “none” and, based on the ratings, they haven’t passed the other requirement from a “former news executive”: likeability.
Even though CBS has spent decade in third place (for in both the AM and PM), it’s safe to say CBS found a way to go even lower with this CBS Evening News by shedding a million viewers. (click “expand”):
Since the Dickerson-Dubois pairing was launched on Jan. 27, the ratings have experienced a consistent decline, according to Nielsen data. While the show debuted with 5.2 million total viewers, it slid to 4.8 million viewers on average its first week on air.
By its second week, the show lost roughly 300,000 viewers and by its third week ended Feb. 16, it garnered just under 4.5 million total viewers, the data showed.
A source close to CBS News said the drop-off in viewers was “not a surprise.”
“When there is an anchor change, traditionally there is a dip in ratings. We understood there would be a short-term ratings hit and we are in this for the long term and are confident in our long game,” the source said.
Steigard added some of her own observations, such as the newscast having “scrambled to adapt on the fly” and failed even before its burial of the Musk appearance (which it put in its Evening News Roundup) as it couldn’t scramble a correspondent to Toronto for the Delta plane crash.
As usual, Byers had a newsy Wednesday night newsletter about the CBS News drama, including word from earlier in the week that CBS News editorial and newsgathering chief Adrienne Roark was jumping ship for local TV conglomerate Tegna after a seven-month tenure beset by nonsense ranging from the Ta-Nehisi Coates struggle sessions to the 60 Minutes scandal to now the CBS Evening News issues.
Byers reported she “never evidenced the newsroom leadership experience historically required of a major broadcast news chief” and, going forward, CBS will likely see huge changes if the sale of its parent company Paramount to the media studio Skydance goes through.
Byers reported “sources…tell me that [CBS News boss Wendy] McMahon will almost certainly lose her job as head of the news division after the merger, in part because of their frustration with the aforementioned controversies and management problems.”
He added she’s already lost confidence of her future overlords “by strongly advocating against Shari Redstone’s plan to settle the lawsuit that Trump brought against 60 Minutes—an obviously absurd capitulation that Shari nevertheless sees as a small price to pay for securing approval of the deal.”
As for whomever replaces McMahon, Byers predicted their to-do list will be daunting:
Meanwhile, whoever replaces McMahon in the new regime will likely be looking at a teardown situation—a new evening news format, possibly a new permanent anchor, a plan for Mornings after Gayle King eventually retires, and whatever is necessary to rebuild morale at 60 after this whole depressing settlement situation passes. It’s a tough job, but hopefully the Ellisons pay well.
