As traditional TV audiences continue to decline, and more Americans switch to streaming platforms and social media, it’s often a challenge for networks to get the public’s attention when relaunching a show. That hasn’t been an issue for the CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil.
The nightly broadcast has received close scrutiny – and a heap of criticism – since its official launch on Monday, and unofficial launch two nights earlier, when the anchor hosted a special edition after the US attack on Venezuela.
Over its first week on air, the Evening News has had no issues booking newsmaker interviews, including with senior Trump administration officials and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado – though Dokoupil faced backlash for not sufficiently challenging some of his guests.
When Dokoupil was first announced as anchor of the show, the network laid out an ambitious plan to tour 10 cities in 10 days, bringing the well-coiffed television veteran to communities across the country. But the news cycle moves quickly in Donald Trump’s America. The best-laid-out network plans can often go sideways.
Thursday’s edition of the show was originally scheduled for Denver, Colorado, but Dokoupil was instead rerouted to Minnesota after an ICE agent killed a US woman there on Wednesday.
Due to the tour, Wednesday night’s episode had ended with a friendly helicopter ride-along segment with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and a discussion of the team’s cheerleaders. “This is the problem with doing a fun tour around the nation when you’re doing our leading hard-news program,” one CBS News staffer, not authorized to speak publicly, told the Guardian.
After days of negative headlines and tough reviews, Dokoupil got some praise on Wednesday night for pressing border czar Tom Homan on whether immigration agents had used excessive force. The interview made news when Homan seemed to differ from the official Department of Homeland Security line: that the woman killed, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, had intentionally tried to hit the officer with her car. “It would be unprofessional to comment on what I think happened in that situation,” Homan said, after Dokoupil showed him a video of the incident. “Let the investigation play out and hold people accountable based on the investigation.”
But that news-making interview was overshadowed soon after, when one of the show’s top producers, Javier Guzman, was abruptly terminated, causing confusion on Wednesday night in the network’s New York newsroom, where he was spotted with his belongings. The network did not provide an explanation for Guzman’s dismissal, which the Guardian first reported, though sources said it stemmed from interpersonal dynamics.
Tom Bettag, a University of Maryland journalism professor who served as executive producer of the Evening News during Dan Rather’s tenure, contrasted the Homan interview favorably with Dokoupil’s extended interview on Saturday with Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, which drew criticism for being insufficiently challenging.
“His interview with Tom Homan was remarkably combative in a courteous manner,” Bettag said. “That interview was the very opposite of the Hegseth interview. Perhaps someone got to him.” (The Hegseth interview was booked directly by Weiss, who has flexed her network of contacts to try to land key interviews during her first three months as editor-in-chief.)
The show has been at its best when leaning on strong reporting from correspondents in the field, including senior national security correspondent Charlie D’Agata, new hire Matt Gutman, homeland security correspondent Nicole Sganga in Minneapolis, Lilia Luciano from the Colombia-Venezuela border and Ed O’Keefe from the White House.
Dokoupil, 45, has never hosted his own show before, though he had co-hosted the network’s morning show since 2019. While the relaunch of a network news show would normally attract some interest, the network – and Dokoupil himself – have received extra attention because he was picked by Weiss, who made revamping CBS Evening News one of her top priorities.
Clips from Evening News have been shared widely on social media, generating strong reactions. “Before this week I had not seen a single clip of the network nightly news on here since the [ABC anchor] David Muir dad jeans pic went viral like 7 years ago. Simpler times,” wrote The Bulwark’s Tim Miller in a post on X.
Dokoupil himself raised the stakes for the show when he said in a post that his version would be “more transparent and accountable” than that of the legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite. Bettag, who served as a producer for Cronkite in his final years, said the revered anchor “would have never said anything so self-serving”, but he expressed confidence in Dokoupil’s interviewing skills, citing his past work.
On Monday, Dokoupil hosted his official launch edition from New York City. While the show featured strong on-air reporting, it got more attention on social media for an awkward moment when Dokoupil seemed ready to present a segment about Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who had announced he wouldn’t run for re-election – but instead was greeted with an on-screen photo of Arizona senator Mark Kelly. “First day, first day, big problems here,” Dokoupil acknowledged, asking the control room: “Are we going to Kelly here?”
Social media lit into Dokoupil particularly hard on Tuesday night, when he hosted the first stop of his around-the-country tour in Miami. He was panned for what seemed to be a glowing tribute to secretary of state Marco Rubio – “Whatever you think of his politics, you’ve got to admit it’s an impressive resume,” he declared – and for a very brief mention of the fifth anniversary of the January 6 Capitol insurrection that was decried as an example of both-sides-ism. “President Trump today accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack on the Capitol, while House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the president of ‘whitewashing’ it,” Dokoupil said.
While judging a show on a few days of viewership data is unfair, it will be a tall task for Dokoupil to get the CBS Evening News out of its longtime spot in third place. Monday’s CBS Evening News brought in 4.4m viewers, an improvement over the show’s recent performance, but far below the 8.1m viewers for ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir, and 7.2m for NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas.
CBS News staffers expressed concern about what Guzman’s abrupt dismissal portends for the show. “Javier was one of the few grown-ups left who know how to put on a nightly newscast to the standard of CBS Evening News,” said another network staffer, also not authorized to speak publicly.
Jay Cowit, a friend and former colleague, called Guzman “a traditional old-school journalist down to his bones”, adding: “Nobody I’ve ever met in two decades of media has been more dedicated to the presence and crucial importance of news in our lives.”
Guzman did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Ending Thursday’s show from Minnesota, Dokoupil offered a commentary on the killing of Good, contrasting the outrage of protesters he spoke with to emails he received “from people who want to see our immigration laws enforced, legally, and peacefully, and with safety for all”.
“Our job now is maybe the most American thing of all: it’s to find a way to live with people who are genuinely different from us, to try to be fair to them, and in doing so to make things better and keep things decent, because in America no one else is going to do it for us,” he said. “It’s not my job to tell you what to think about what happened here yesterday, but I can tell you we owe our children a nation that is better than the one we live in today.”
Dokoupil received many messages of praise on social media for his comments, but one viewer felt differently. “Ditch the final thoughts,” they wrote. “Just tell us the news.”
