It has been a tumultuous year for the CBS Evening News. The network hopes to change that in 2026, as CBS News has picked Tony Dokoupil to serve as the new anchor of the nightly newscast.
According to a report from Oliver Darcy of Status, the network has informed Dokoupil that it has selected him to lead the program going forward. He’ll begin anchoring the newscast at the start of the new year.
Dokoupil will succeed John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, who are both set to exit CBS News in the coming days. Those two replaced longtime anchor Norah O’Donnell after her January exit. However, the newscast took a ratings tumble in the wake of O’Donnell’s departure, dropping from more than 5 million viewers per evening to struggling to reach an audience of 4 million per night under Dickerson and DuBois’ tenure.
Currently, Tony Dokoupil serves as a co-host of CBS Mornings. The 44-year-old works with Gayle King and Nate Burleson on the show. A report from the New York Post suggests that with the elevation to Evening News, Dokoupil won’t be the only anchor leaving the morning show. It shared that it is expected that King will leave the network when her contract concludes in May. Previously, CBS News denied that it was preparing to exile King.
The 44-year-old Dokoupil joined CBS News in 2016. His appointment to the newscast comes after CBS News reportedly made runs at both Bret Baier of Fox News and Anderson Cooper of CNN and 60 Minutes to helm the nightly newscast. Both options failed to come to fruition, as Baier is in the midst of a multi-year contract, and Cooper decided to re-up his deal with CNN.
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Tony Dokouil is such a mediocre choice for that job. Is it because he is a white straight male or just mediocre.
At 44, it will give CBS News plenty of runway to fully regain the integrity that the news organization has lost over the past 40 years, as extreme bias at not just CBS, but all major news organizations have become much worse over the past 10.
Back in the 90’s, Tom Brokaw stated that news had slipped since the corporations that own them decided that profits were more important than news reporting. At the time, centered reporting was taking a back seat to biased opinion.
As Dokoupil has proven to show some integrity recently as he called out Colbert on his lack of professionalism and ethics, we can only hope that integrity spills over to the rest of the organization.