For more than half a century, CBS Evening News has been synonymous with the network’s reputation for journalistic excellence, with anchors such as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather holding court on a nightly basis. Now, it will be up to Bari Weiss, CBS News’s editor in chief, who has no previous background in television, to help decide what comes next for the show, which has struggled to attract viewers.
On Monday, CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson – one of the network’s best-known personalities – announced he would leave the network at the end of the year, leaving behind his fellow anchor, Maurice DuBois.
While the network has not addressed DuBois’ fate, network insiders expect that CBS News will return to a single anchor format. The question now is whether Weiss and Tom Cibrowski, the network president, will choose an internal candidate, or hire from the outside, as they put their imprint on a ratings-challenged show that, like its rivals, is struggling with the challenges of the digital age.
Network management had attempted to shake things up by introducing a new format for the show in January. In addition to having co-anchors, the show pivoted to a formula that prioritized longer, more deeply reported stories rather than hard news run-downs from Washington. Rather than jolting the show out of its long-time position in third place, trailing both ABC World News Tonight and the NBC Nightly News in viewers, the audience dropped off even further.
If the network chooses to promote from within, Tony Dokoupil, the morning show co-anchor, stands as good a chance as anyone. Norah O’Donnell, who anchored the show from 2019 to 2024, has also been mentioned.
But Weiss seems interested in hiring an external candidate and has shown interest in several top anchors. The problem is that many of them are already under contract at their existing networks for several more years.
Bret Baier, the Fox News anchor, is one of those external options, but the evening news anchor made clear this week that he is signed with Fox through 2028. Another candidate, Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor, is also under contract at the network – though he has a pre-existing relationship with CBS News through his role as a correspondent on 60 Minutes.
Weiss has also expressed interest in another Fox anchor, Dana Perino, the Guardian has learned. But Perino, like Baier, is under contract for several more years – into the next decade, in her case – and cannot sign with a rival network.
Perino appeared on Weiss’s Honesty with Bari Weiss podcast in May, and the two were effusive in praising each other. “The private Dana is even more gracious and shining than the public one,” Weiss said. “You are a person who models, frankly, just classy behavior, the kind of class that I think a lot of people have forgotten.”
Perino described herself as “a huge fan” of Weiss and her wife, Nellie Bowles, and said that their website the Free Press is “one of the best things that has kept me more informed and smarter, and also super entertained”.
In chatter among employees, another name that has come up – but isn’t likely in serious consideration – is Shepard Smith, a former Fox News anchor, who resigned suddenly from the network in 2019. He signed with financial network CNBC to anchor a nightly newscast, but the experiment failed and he left the network in 2022. Since then, Smith has kept a low profile.
Even if Weiss can land a big-name outsider, it’s an open question whether it would actually make a difference. CBS News has gone through a host of evening news anchors – since 2011, the show has been hosted by Katie Couric, Scott Pelley, Anthony Mason, Jeff Glor and O’Donnell, in addition to the current pairing – but none have been able to change the evening news pecking order. And with every switch behind the anchor desk, “you have sent viewers away each time”, said a former CBS News executive who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Generally, viewers tend to stick with their evening news show of choice and seem unwilling to try out the competition. While NBC recently had a change in the anchor chair, with Tom Llamas replacing longtime anchor Lester Holt, ABC has seen continuity with David Muir leading the show since 2014. This season, Muir’s show has averaged 7.5 million viewers, comfortably ahead of NBC (5.7 million viewers) and far ahead of CBS (3.7 million viewers).
“She’s got a disaster on her hands at the Evening News and she’s got to fix the Evening News, and that’s got to be her new project,” said Tom Bettag, a lecturer at the University of Maryland’s journalism school who spent 22 years at CBS News, including a five-year stint as executive producer of the nightly show under Dan Rather.
While the show’s ratings aren’t what they were, Bettag said the show is still essential to the identity of the network, not to mention a reliable source of advertiser revenue. “If they have a really strong Evening News, it lifts the whole place,” he added.
CBS News employees – who were not authorized to comment – were less specific about what needs to change on the evening show and who the network should pick to anchor. “What they need is someone who plays a very good anchor man and hopefully has journalistic chops and a very talented show-runner,” one staffer told the Guardian, while another was more concise: “We need to just do a damn newscast. Don’t overthink it.”
The CBS Evening News may not hold the place in society it once did, but what Weiss (and Cibrowski) decide to do with the show could hint at her longterm strategy and provide an early signal of whether she might be successful in turning around the network’s fortunes.
“I wouldn’t say it’s the most important decision, but it’s probably the most telling decision, about where she’s taking the direction of the company,” the former CBS News executive said.
