Expect new headlines soon out of “CBS Evening News.”
After being overhauled in major fashion earlier this year, the venerable evening newscast, which has direct ties to Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, is likely to get some new twists and tweaks. The program, according to two people familiar with CBSD News, is seen as being at the of a to-do list for Tom Cibrowski, the executive recently named to lead CBS News and whose decision-making has even more potency after his direct superior, Wendy McMahon, announced on Monday her plans to leave the company.
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The show has lost a significant chunk of its viewership since a new format was unveiled in January that relies on the dual-anchor team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, and a story mix that hinges more closely on enterprise and feature reporting than it does on breaking news. For the five-day period starting May 5, “CBS Evening News” won an average of 3.63 million viewers, according to data from Nielsen, compared with an average of about 4.89 million during Norah O’Donnell’s last week behind the show’s desk.
Two people familiar with CBS News suggested Cibrowski is likely to focus quickly on stabilizing the program’s viewership, which has slipped further behind that of its two main rivals, ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “NBC Nightly News.” The ABC newscast won an average of nearly 7.27 million viewers last week, while the NBC program captured an average of nearly 5.64 million.
CBS News declined to make executives available for comment.
The current “CBS Evening News” was designed to give viewers an alternative to what they usually see in the time slot. “NBC Nightly” is about to undergo a transition of its own, with Lester Holt stepping away from the desk he has occupied for about a decade and Tom Llamas, a former ABC News anchor who was seen as a possible successor for David Muir, moving into the role. CBS executives felt NBC News could hew closer to what ABC does, prompting them to find ways to differentiate CBS’ evening product.
But the “CBS Evening News” overhaul comes at a fraught time. The news division is under the microscope at parent company Paramount Global, which is embroiled in settlement talks over a lawsuit from Trump administration centered on an interview with former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris last year from “60 Minutes” that Trump claims misled voters on the eve of the 2024 election. That has spurred Paramount to put new pressures on “60 Minutes” in recent months that prompted Bill Owens, the show’s executive producer, to quit, and played a role in McMahon’s exit as well. With “Evening News” ratings slipping most weeks since the revamp, there is a growing sense Paramount will have less patience for the show to find its crowd.
It’s also a tough moment to figure out what news audiences want to see. There is still a sizable audience that wants the usual evening-news debrief, with quick-hit reports on the news of the day, and a few inspirational segments featuring good deeds and interesting ideas from all over America. Nearly 16.5 million people watched “CBS Evening News,” “NBC Nightly News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight” combined last week, according to Nielsen . And yet, more people can keep up with minute-by-minute changes in news stories all day by staying close to the web and social media. In a future driven by artificial intelligence, a journalism fan might be able to get a summary of breaking news across multiple subjects with a well-crafted query — negating any need for a summary show in the early evening.
Some of those dynamics factored into the new “CBS Evening News” format. The show attempts to give viewers something they aren’t getting elsewhere, a programming mission that forces even Washington Bureau mainstays like Nancy Cordes and Ed O’Keefe to fan out around the country for stories that focus less on the news of the day, but what that news could mean in days to come.
The lack of an immediate connection with a larger group of viewers is likely, however, to bring new focus on the look and feel of “Evening News.” Does it require two anchors? Could there be more breaking news in the show’s opening segment? These questions and others like them may have to be answered quickly — and, depending on the answers, the show could look less distinct from its competitors.
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