Tony Dokoupil was supposed to rescue the third-place CBS Evening News. Instead, his rocky debut has critics wondering whether CBS has finally lost the race for good.
From awkward on-air moments to what insiders deride as a “state TV” vibe, Dokoupil’s rollout has been the opposite of smooth. Industry critics quickly labeled the launch “inauspicious,” while staffers quietly complained of confusion, whiplash, and a newsroom suddenly unsure of what it stands for.
His counterparts at NBC and ABC have big ratings leads and seem to have clear direction and momentum. Not so at CBS.
Detractors like Variety’s Daniel D’Addario described Dokoupil’s debut as “inauspicious,” and media critic Jeff Jarvis wrote that Dokoupil’s launch was “a nail in the coffin” of CBS’s journalistic reputation.
Ratings dipped almost immediately, maintaining CBS’s long-standing basement status and raising uncomfortable questions about whether the Tiffany Network knows what kind of news it wants to deliver with the controversial Bari Weiss running the operation.
But Tony Dokoupil, the former CBS Mornings anchor, with admittedly not a lot of name recognition, can be folksier, looser and just plain funny, especially compared to his rather stiff rivals at ABC and NBC. He sometimes breathes fresh air into what’s traditionally been a highly produced, buttoned-up thirty minutes on all the networks.
Take a recent broadcast from Pittsburgh. He was seen laughing during an interview with a dog robot, and when he ended the show signing off from a steel plant, where he wore a hardhat, he turned his back to the camera and yukked it up with the workers. You won’t see the more regal David Muir doing that at ABC.
Tony Dokoupil himself has criticized the mainstream media as untrustworthy. But the real sticking point is what some call his softer interview style – especially with such political figures as Pete Hegseth, Border Czar Tom Homan, and Donald Trump. He did ask them relatively aggressive questions. However, Trump demanded CBS air all thirteen minutes of his recent interview or he would be sued. They aired it. But CBS countered that it planned to run it regardless of what the president said.
Others say the problem isn’t Tony Dokoupil himself, but Weiss, who was hired from the Free Press to move CBS’s coverage to the political center. Critics say she’s making it more MAGA-friendly and caused the opening night flubs by rewriting Dokoupil’s script minutes before airtime.
Meanwhile, over at ABC, David Muir sits firmly on top of the heap, and looks almost bored doing it. He is the most-watched evening news anchor, leading World News Tonight in total viewers for years. He’s won major journalism awards, and Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Some viewers think he’s trustworthy, magnetic, and calming – and even dish about his good looks. He projects smoothness, and an ability to command the chair, even if he never seems to take a breath of air. Whether you like him or not, Muir plays the part on television as if he were born for it.
Conservative critics have argued that Muir has shown left-leaning bias. When he moderated the September 2024 presidential debate, he was accused of fact-checking Trump more frequently than Kamala Harris. Trump cried foul as loudly as he could.
“Narcissistic” is another adjective used to describe Muir. While covering the Los Angeles forest fires, social media went wild when the cameras showed that he had clipped the back of his jacket in several places to make it tighter in the front. In lightning speed, mockery about appearance over substance bellowed across the media landscape.
But get this: The criticism doesn’t seem to matter. ABC wears the crown. He has more than eight million nightly viewers, and they keep watching. When it comes to ratings, Muir scores.
NBC, by contrast, is sweating – and sprinting.
Tom Llamas, installed at NBC Nightly News a few months before Dukoupil, has brought intensity, ambition, and a caffeine-fueled urgency to a broadcast long defined by Lester Holt’s calm authority. Inside 30 Rock, Llamas has earned a reputation as both overly demanding and a strong leader.
In his first full month anchoring, the network saw slight dips in overall viewership compared to Lester Holt’s final weeks, and remained millions behind ABC’s World News Tonight in total audience numbers.
But he’s done what no one really thought he could. He bested ABC in the key young advertising demo (the only number that really matters) several times, including recently when he beat ABC for the week. And when he started in June, it was the only evening newscast to grow year-over-year.
That’s a good omen for someone who has to carry the mantle of the legendary Holt. NBC isn’t winning yet – but it’s clearly trying. And in a shrinking evening news environment, hard work matters.
But the show under Llamas is packed with eye-catching videos of minor or meaningless local stories. The other night these included kids stranded on a bus, a foreign avalanche and an iguana falling out of a Florida tree, a kind of paint-by-numbers populism. The other night Llamas led off with winter storms, a staple of local news.
Trump isn’t a fan of Llamas either. When he was an ABC correspondent during the 2016 campaign, candidate Trump insulted him during a contentious exchange leading to cries of bias by conservatives.
So here’s where we stand. ABC projects power. NBC projects hunger. CBS projects, for now, confusion.
In a media world where trust is vaporizing and audiences are dwindling by the minute, perception matters as much as performance. Right now, David Muir is the unmovable king, Tom Llamas the challenger sharpening his knives, and Tony Dokoupil the anchor caught in a network identity crisis he didn’t create, but now owns.
Maybe CBS’ perceived turn to the right will garner a different audience, or maybe it will backfire. It’s a bold move to bring on a young turk who isn’t afraid to shake things up both in his demeanor and his choice of guests. And that makes many uncomfortable, and others hopeful for what they believe should be a more balanced broadcast.
The nightly news wars are no longer about who gets to the scene of a national tragedy providing exclusive coverage. It’s about staying alive. And at CBS, time isn’t on its side.
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Great analysis. i just have a problem when I hear the word “balanced”. The news is news, truth is truth, “Balance” by it’s very definition implies that there are 2 sides. There AREN’T. Leave that BS for social media. There’s one truth and THAT could be left, right or center. Maybe if news told the absolute truth, people would tune in again.