The second week of Tony Dokoupil’s term as CBS Evening News anchor drew a slightly larger audience than the first. The network’s 60 Minutes, however, took a sizable hit as it aired a previously shelved story about conditions at a Salvadoran prison.
The CBS Evening News averaged 4.19 million total viewers for the week of Jan. 12 and 584,000 adults 25-54, the core ad demographic for news programming. Both figures improved slightly on Dokoupil’s first full week (4.17 million viewers, 533,00 adults 25-54) and on the newscast’s prior average for the 2025-26 season (4.02 million and 498,500).
The uptick didn’t change CBS’ spot in the network evening standings, where it trails ABC and NBC by a wide margin (and has for several years). ABC’s World News Tonight averaged 8.16 million viewers and 1.04 million adults 25-54 for the week of Jan. 12, and the NBC Nightly News drew 6.68 million viewers and 964,000 in the 25-54 demo.
Dokoupil’s first two weeks as anchor are also down from the same time frame last year, when the CBS Evening News averaged 5.13 million viewer and 729,000 adults 25-54.
The current week started auspiciously for the Evening News, which saw a big jump to 6.38 million viewers Monday night — its best night since 2021. World News Tonight was way up as well, drawing 10.88 million on ABC for its strongest showing since April 2020. The NBC Nightly News was pre-empted Monday for an NBA game, so it appears that a lot of those viewers turned to one of the other networks. Ratings data for Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s newscasts weren’t available at publication time.
As for 60 Minutes, the Jan. 18 episode included “Inside CECOT,” a story reported by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about the Salvadoran prison where the Trump administration has sent more than 200 Venezuelan deportees as part of its mass deportation policy. The segment had been slated to air in December, but CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled it at the last minute, saying the story needed more reporting. On Sunday, the story aired in its original form, with Alfonsi recording a new in-studio piece that aired at the end of the piece.
Far fewer viewers than normally watch 60 Minutes saw the CECOT story, though, as it aired opposite an NFL playoff game on NBC that had a huge audience of more than 40 million viewers. CBS did not have an NFL game as a lead-in for 60 Minutes on Sunday as it often does during the NFL season. As a result, the program averaged only about 5.1 million viewers, well below its season average of 9.41 million. Despite airing all new material in the hour, CBS labeled Sunday’s installment as 60 Minutes Presents, a designation usually reserved for repeats and which won’t count against the show’s official season average in Nielsen ratings.
Original Article on Hollywood Reporter