‘CBS Evening News’ switches up tease headlines, ultimately ends up with shorter segment

The “CBS Evening News” has been tinkering with how it kicks off each broadcast for the past several months, with the end result, at least so far, being that its viewers start getting traditional news reporting much sooner than on its rivals. 

During January 2024, the show stopped opening the show directly with the headlines segment it added in January 2023, instead having anchor Norah O’Donnell appear on camera briefly before running the headlines segment. 

On Jan. 16, 2024, the newscast then changed to a single-topic cold open with the show logo in the lower left corner.

O’Donnell would then say “The ‘CBS Evening News’ begins right now” before the open ran. 

The control room would then cut to a shot of O’Donnell standing on-set with the graphics that normally would have been used for the full-screen headlines segment playing out on the video wall behind her. Music continued to play under the segment and the “headlines” branding was still visible in the animated transitions shown on the wall.

When O’Donnell was on the road during January 2024, the headlines segment returned to airing fullscreen, but would still play after the open.

Then, on Feb. 26, 2024, the show again changed up the cold open, switching to a slightly larger version of the logo in a blue burst of color placed in the lower left of the screen. This single-topic tease is now followed by the animated open before cutting to O’Donnell at the anchor desk, diving right into the top story.

O’Donnell continues to use a variation of the “The ‘CBS Evening News’ starts now” line but the headlines segment has been completely removed. 

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This cuts down the tease, open, and anchor greeting to around 40 seconds, with the top package starting around 60 seconds in, though obviously the timing varies slightly from day to day.

This convention, which has continued into April 2024, allows the newscast to be well into actual content before “ABC World News Tonight” and “NBC Nightly News” are even done with their own headline tease segments (neither ABC nor NBC label their segments as “headlines” on screen). 

“Nightly” tease headlines tend to be around 90 seconds while the element on “ABC World News Tonight” tends to clock in at more than 2 minutes, by the far one of the longest on American television news. 

Since then, “Evening” has also been trying out more “video on video“-style shots using its studio video walls and mobile vertical monitors, something that “Nightly” has been doing for some time. 

This is most often done at the top of the show while O’Donnell reads details about the day’s top stories, similar to what Lester Holt does on “Nightly.” 

“World News Tonight” typically uses a video on video shot as part of its anchor read as well, but it typically is much shorter and less elaborate than the multi-shot, multi-screen setups “Nightly” and now, to some extent, “Evening” uses. 

When O’Donnell first took over “Evening,” she was quoted in the press as pointing out the broadcast purposefully cut back its headline teases in order to get viewers to actual reporting faster, but the show gradually started out outgrow that original shorter footprint.

It seemingly went in the opposite direction in February 2023, when it added back the full “headlines” segment. Variations of this part of the newscast have appeared off and on over the years and tend to follow the feel of the “CBS Mornings” trademark 90-second “EyeOpener,” which is designed to be both a news headline and tease element for content to come later in the broadcast. 

By dropping headlines on “Evening” altogether, it appears CBS is now again deliberately attempting to differentiate itself from ABC and NBC while also essentially opening up some additional time for more traditional packages and anchor VOs.

This does remove the ability for a view to walk away from watching the first few minutes of the newscast feeling at least somewhat informed of what’s going in the world.

Both “World News Tonight” and “Nightly” do offer a decent summary of the day’s news and the segments also tend to be carefully crafted to avoid giving away all the details and weaving in tidbits of additional reporting yet to come later in the broadcast.

These segments have grown in sophistication over the years, with small teams now assigned to help produce, edit and write them. Most networks also pre-produces these segments now, meaning on a normal news day they are not done live. 

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Using teases and headlines in TV news essentially can be divided into two schools of thought: Let viewers feel informed from the beginning while also offering enough to get them to stick around for at least the first block (which have all grown on network evening newscasts in recent years) or, on the opposite end, dive right into the news with minimal previews of what’s to come and let viewers feel like the broadcast is less cluttered and, perhaps, more comprehensive. 

The battle over how many teases and headlines work has been going on for decades on television, of course, though local newscasts have largely moved away from lengthy teases and long, superlative-filled opens promoting the news brand. 

Instead, many local newscasts now use shorter teases or kickoff with a short open that’s perhaps under 10 seconds long.