News anchor John Dickerson signed off for the final time Thursday night by emotionally bidding farewell to his CBS Evening News partner Maurice DuBois, who is also leaving both the show and the Tiffany Network amid Bari Weiss’ shakeup at the Tiffany Network.
The final broadcast of the two-anchor team comes just days after Weiss – the network’s “anti-woke” editor-in-chief who was hired this past fall – announced that CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil was taking over as host of the perennially third-place nightly news program.
At the end of Thursday’s telecast, DuBois – who jumped from the network’s flagship New York station to the national weeknight show roughly a year ago – expressed his gratitude to the program’s crew and his on-air colleague.
“I cannot thank this team enough,” DuBois declared. “I’ve walked out of here each night extremely proud of the work we’ve done together. And you, our viewers, I cannot thank you enough for placing your trust in us.”
Turning to Dickerson, DuBois said he was “an outstanding journalist” and “an even better person,” adding: “I’ve learned quite a bit from working with you. Proud to call you not just a colleague, but a friend.”
Dickerson, meanwhile, grew somewhat emotional and began choking back tears as he replied to DuBois.
“Thank you, Maurice. You know, a year and a half ago we didn’t even really know each other. And you’ve become a model for me and a trusted friend,” he said while his voice broke a bit.
“It has been an honor to put the work of our correspondents, producers, editors, and writers before you,” Dickerson continued. “And to work with my partner, Maurice, who put his heart into our shared concern, doing right by you … your expectation has been our responsibility and our reward.”
With DuBois returning his partner’s compliments, the pair then closed out the broadcast with CBS News legend Edward R. Murrow’s famous sign-off: “Thank you for watching. Good night and good luck.”
Shortly after Paramount chair David Ellison hired Weiss and purchased her center-right “heterodox” digital outlet The Free Press for $150 million, she began looking at revamping CBS Evening News – which had already been rebooted less than a year earlier. Late last year, it was announced that anchor Norah O’Donnell would be replaced after five-plus years by the two-man team of DuBois and Dickerson, and the show would lean more into 60 Minutes-style programming.
Weiss, meanwhile, unsuccessfully tried to poach high-profile talent from other networks to lead the evening program, approaching both Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier and CNN mainstay Anderson Cooper (who also works as a 60 Minutes correspondent). Baier, however, is locked in a multi-year deal with Fox while Cooper was uninterested in the gig and re-signed with CNN.
Amid the new editor-in-chief’s overt efforts to replace them, both Dickerson and DuBois decided to preemptively announce their departures from CBS Evening News and the network as a whole.
“He’s a huge, huge loss,” one network staffer said in late October when Dickerson –who’d been with CBS News for 16 years and also helmed the Sunday show Face the Nation – announced he was leaving. Other network insiders said at the time that the network “wanted him to fail.”
DuBois would follow Dickerson a few weeks later, calling his brief co-anchoring stint the “Honor of a Lifetime” while saying he’d “filled with gratitude, cherished relationships and amazing memories.”
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In the end, unable to get any of the big names she had courted externally, Weiss decided to give the job to Dokoupil, who had long been considered the top internal candidate – particularly due to his fervent pro-Israeli stance, which aligns with the self-described “Zionist fanatic” Weiss.
In fact, prior to Ellison installing her to lead CBS News, Weiss and The Free Press vehemently defended Dokoupil after he was reprimanded by the network’s management for his contentious and combative interview with celebrated author Ta-Nehisi Coates over Palestine and Israel.
At the time, Dokoupil was admonished by CBS News executives Wendy McMahon and Adrienne Roarke – neither of whom are with the network now – for violating the network’s editorial standards with the interview. In a series of articles, Weiss and The Free Press went to bat for the morning host while blasting CBS News’ actions against him.
The day before DuBois and Dickerson signed off for the final time, CBS News promoted Dokoupil’s debut as CBS Evening News anchor, noting that his run will launch with a “Live from America” 10-city, 10-day tour.
“For his first night as anchor of the CBS EVENING NEWS on Jan. 5, Dokoupil will be in Miami, the kickoff for two weeks of the CBS EVENING NEWS broadcasts from the road. In a new city each day, Dokoupil will meet Americans face to face,” the network declared in a press release. “This road trip builds on Dokoupil’s more than two decades of journalism spanning the country and on the instinct that has defined his coverage: to follow the story, talking not only to newsmakers, but to the people most affected by the news.”
In recent weeks, the news network has gone through an upheaval under Weiss’ leadership. Besides the network suffering through brutal layoffs that largely impacted people of color and women, which were already underway before Weiss was hired, CBS News has also axed several digital shows while revamping its weekend morning program.
At the same time, Weiss has taken heat for installing herself as an on-air personality when she served as the moderator for the network’s much-hyped but poorly received town hall with Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk, who is now the leader of the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA.
Following the special, which was heavily promoted by CBS News but still pulled in less than two million viewers, the network announced that it was launching a series of debates and town halls called Things That Matter – and the first participant will be Vice President JD Vance.
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