The definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
CBS News must be insane.
In its well-intentioned but futile sixth attempt to jump-start the CBS Evening News by naming Tony Dokoupil as anchor, the once-dominant news division is confronting an irreversible reality: The audience for network evening newscasts is aging out rapidly, and the viewers who remain loyal to the 6:30p.m. broadcast are unlikely to change deeply ingrained viewing habits simply because a new face has taken the anchor chair.
Dokoupil, 44, is the latest in a parade of anchors who have attempted to lift the Evening News out of third place behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight. It’s been mission impossible for decades. CBS has been mired in third place since 1993 and every attempt to resuscitate it has been unsuccessful. No one, not Katie Couric (sorry, Katie) Scott Pelley, Anthony Mason, Jeff Glor, Norah O’Donnell, or the current team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois was able to move the broadcast to second place.
Once again, the three network newscasts are anchored by three telegenic males: David Muir, 52, on ABC and Tom Llamas, 46, on NBC. Dokoupil was selected by Bari Weiss, CBS News’ newly installed editor-in-chief who reports directly to David Ellison, chairman of Paramount, parent of CBS.
Dokoupil has a formidable challenge: To succeed from a ratings standpoint, he will have to lure the decreasing number of older viewers away from the competition. There is no new crop of viewers attracted to the format. According to data published this month from the Pew Research Center, young adults are “generally less likely than older Americans to get their news from traditional platforms,” such as television and radio. In the study, “Young Adults and the Future of News,” an overwhelming 95% say they sometimes get news from their digital devices. According to Pew, “Adults under 30 are much more likely to get news on social media than older adults. There is a 48 percentage point gap between the shares of Americans ages 18 to 29 and those 65 and older who get news on social media at least sometimes (76% vs. 28%).”
What’s equally concerning is that young adults, Pew reported, prefer social media for learning of breaking news. One 22-year-old woman told Pew that she first saw a breaking news event on TikTok and then on Fox News and other news sites the next day.
Pew’s research also found young Americans are more likely than older individuals to trust information from social media. Young adults even define what a journalist is more broadly than those in an older demographic, according to Pew, with “many saying it can include podcast hosts, newsletter writers and social media content creators. Adults under 30 are more likely than older adults to consider someone a journalist if they write their own newsletter about news or make their own news-related videos or posts on social media.”
All of which questions the relevance of the network evening news, which used to be considered the broadcasts of record. Granted, together they continue to attract an impressive combined audience of approximately 18 million. But in the 25-54 demographic that advertisers crave, that total audience shrinks to about two-and-a-half million combined. The advertisements tell the stark tale: virtually all of them are from pharmaceutical companies and products geared to older viewers. (Hello Depends!)
I covered CBS News as a reporter at Variety, Newsday, and The Wall Street Journal and witnessed the dominance of the CBS Evening News begin to weaken and slip out of first place in 1989. It never fully recovered. I continue to watch the evening newscasts and (only half-kidding) think they’re all produced by Vin Di Bona, the creator of the long running primetime series America’s Funniest Home Videos. These broadcasts are generally a collection of “Caught on Camera” snippets, weather stories, and heart-tugging human interest features, even if they’re front-loaded with the prerequisite and obligatory headlines from the nation’s capital. But with about 22 minutes of airtime minus commercials, there’s little room for hard news and analysis.
As 2025 ends, I question the relevance of a regular network evening newscast. For evidence as to how important the Evening News once was to CBS Inc., go to YouTube and search “CBS Evening News Christmas Card 1986.” You’ll see anchor Dan Rather introduce a three-and-a-half minute video “put together by and for the people who work — and I mean work — behind the scenes to put this piece of journalism together each night.” There were an astounding 24 bureaus worldwide, including locations in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Bonn, Manila, Cairo, as well as domestic bureaus in Boston, Denver, Atlanta, and Seattle. Today, there are a smattering of domestic bureaus and the vast majority of international news is covered out of the London bureau.
Perhaps it’s inevitable, but just as CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ostensibly for economic reasons (though few believe that explanation), it may not be long before one network cancels its evening newscast. If Paramount doesn’t succeed in its (for now) hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, which would include CNN, thereby paving the way for a CBS News-CNN merger, Ellison may choose to do away with the Evening News. and return the half-hour to the CBS-owned stations and affiliates. After all, it’s an economic albatross for the network, and local stations could capture the advertising revenue while CBS News correspondents could file reports that could be incorporated into the local newscast. Why couldn’t Kristine Johnson on WCBS in New York or Juliette Goodrich on KPIX in San Francisco introduce a report from, say, Ramy Inocencio in London instead of an anchor positioned in a New York studio?
When there is breaking news, CBS News could utilize one of its anchors from CBS Mornings or even 60 Minutes.
Is the network news anchor — the so-called Voice of God — becoming obsolete? As someone on X posted, commenting on Tony Dokoupil’s new assignment, “remember when such an announcement was a big deal?”
Kevin Goldman, who covered the media with a specialty in broadcast journalism for Variety, Newsday/New York Newsday, and The Wall Street Journal, and who is the author of Conflicting Accounts: The Creation and Crash of the Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Empire (Simon & Schuster), is currently writing a memoir.
