‘CBS Evening News’ ratings continue to erode under Tony Dokoupil

“CBS Evening News” ratings have dipped below 4 million viewers again following another revamp and new personality at the desk.

Average total viewers for the five days ending March 13, 2026, were recorded at 3.83 million, according to Nielsen. That includes 468,000 in the adults 25 to 54 demo. 

March 13’s broadcast was retitled to simply “Evening News,” so that day’s figures were not included in Nielsen’s calculation (though it’s common for broadcasters to use the retitling trick when they feel a broadcast may underperform). 

Dipping below 4 million is notable both because it’s a significant threshold and because it’s similar to ratings that reportedly caused panic at the network prior to Tony Dokoupil’s tenure during the broadcast’s previous iteration. 

CBS is also failing to rile the competition.

During that same period, “ABC World News Tonight” scored 8.48 million average viewers across five installments. The broadcast, anchored by David Muir, had 1.03 million in the demo. “NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas” came in second with 6.51 million total and 946,000 in the demo across five days.

Those figures indicate that CBS’s average is approaching half of NBC’s numbers, while the gap between NBC and ABC is around 30%.

Demo figures are perhaps even more alarming. “CBS Evening News” lost about 15% of its viewership in the adults 25 to 54 bracket for the first quarter of 2026. ABC is also off by around 4%, while “Nightly” is up 8%.

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A source told Variety that CBS executives at least partially attribute the dip in ratings to the end of daylight savings time on March 8, 2026. However, while NBC and ABC both lost viewers during that same timeframe, the differences were significantly less. 

When comparing ratings for the week before daylight savings time ended, “WNT” was down about 5%, or 421,000 viewers (from 8.901 million the week of March 2, 2026). “Nightly” also dropped slightly, losing about 388,000 viewers (compared to 6.898 the week of March 2).

Meanwhile, “Evening” had racked up 4.17 million average viewers the week of March 2 before dipping to the 3.38 million number the following week, a drop of almost 18% — compared to the middle-single digit loss at ABC and NBC.

Dokoupil was also the only big-three anchor to journey to the Middle East to get closer to the Iran-Israel-U.S. conflict. While the war in general has garnered significant ratings boosts across cable and broadcast news in general, it did not appear to have a significant affect on CBS.

Prior to the Dickerson-DuBois helmed newscast that last triggered sub-4 million numbers, Norah O’Donnell had been delivering of around 5.4 million in the weeks before she left the broadcast in 2024. Dokoupil first week averaged around 4.17 million viewers, which rose to 4.6 million the following week. 

The dip in ratings comes just months after management of the newly-merged Paramount Skydance instituted sweeping overhauls to the entire news division. The changes were framed as being a way to report different perspectives and ideological standpoints, but were also criticized for being biased. 

It also represents a significant blow to Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News who was appointed after the merger by David Ellison, the CEO of the new company. CBS has also seen significant layoffs both before and after the merger and resignations from across the newsroom came later, including several prominent on-air figures.