Tony Dokoupil’s first week on “CBS Evening News” has seen slipping ratings across the board.
As Dokoupil took the helm of the evening news telecast, the first week of Jan. 5-11 averaged 4.17 million viewers, according to Nielsen big data plus panel live-plus-same-day figures. That’s down 23% from the same week last year, which saw “CBS Evening News” score 5.4 million viewers from Jan. 6-10, 2025.
“CBS Evening News” also saw a 23% year-over-year decrease in the 25-54 demo, with the week of Jan. 5-11 averaging 533,000 as compared to the 690,000 demo viewers averaged by the show during the first week of 2025.
A slight year-over-year downtick is to be expected due to declining linear viewership, with all networks seeing ratings decreases as compared to 2025. The ratings did, however, boost the season-to-date averages for CBS News, with total viewers up 4% while demo viewers were up by 8%.
Ratings for Dokoupil’s debut were also down from the debut of previous hosts John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, which averaged 4.91 million viewers and 655,000 demo viewers during the week of Jan. 27, which plunged the new hosts into a turbulent news cycle amid the California wildfires and the inauguration. Compared to Dickerson and DuBois, total viewers for Dokoupil were down 15% and demo viewers were down 19%.
CBS Evening News notably saw gains across digital and social platforms, with CBS Evening News article traffic growing 229% over the 2025 weekly average and total minutes on YouTube growing 58% when compared to the 2025 weekly average.
Ratings for the week were also well below CBS News’ competitors, with ABC’s World News Tonight averaging 8.08 million viewers and 989,000 demo viewers while NBC’s Nightly News averaged 6.73 million viewers and 992,000 demo viewers.
In line with Dokoupil’s average, his first night launched to 4.4 million viewers and 596,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo, both of which improved up the season’s current average.
News broke Tuesday that Dokoupil, who has been criticized for the direction he’s taking the news program, sat down for an interview with Donald Trump about about Iran, the economy and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, which will air Tuesday evening.
