Tony Dokoupil’s fill-in Matt Gutman gets ‘CBS – Business News
“CBS Evening News” scored its best weekly viewers in months — as struggling anchor Tony Dokoupil was on trip.
The show averaged 4.1 million viewers for the week of July 27, in accordance with Nielsen, marking the show’s best efficiency in 17 weeks and the primary time the “Evening News” has topped the 4 million-viewer mark since late March.
The upbeat numbers got here as Matt Gutman crammed in for Dokoupil, who has battle to keep the show’s scores above 4 million in latest months,
Rating had been up for “CBS Evening News” during Tony Dokoupil’s trip. CBS by way of Getty Images
“It’s a bad sign for Tony when your substitute anchor reels in over 100,000 more viewers than you,” a CBS source stated, happening to take a position: “If this trend continues, [CBS News Editor-in-Chief] Bari Weiss will have to think about changing anchors.”
The source stated that when Dokoupil returns to the chair, he’ll must hit the ground operating and keep viewership above 4 million — or else it’s a “clear indication” that the viewers prefers Gutman –“even if it’s a small sample.”
A CBS News insider stated all community newscasts had more viewers the week of July 27 when in comparison with the week of July 20.
Aside from the gain of 100,000 viewers for Gutman, he additionally beat Doukoupil within the advertiser-coveted demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds. For the week of July 27, Gutman pulled in 570,000 viewers within the demo versus Dokoupil’s 516,000 complete, a week earlier.
What’s more, “CBS Evening News” has struggled to persistently hit over 4 million viewers since Weiss launched a main overhaul of the show earlier this 12 months, which included putting in Dokoupil.
While the anchor hit 4 million viewers during the week of June 22, he hasn’t exceeded that threshold since averaging 4.2 million viewers during the week of March 30, in accordance with Status, which first reported the most recent scores.
Matt Gutman reeled in 4.1 million viewers within the week he anchored. Getty Images
One CBS staffer chalked Gutman’s scores bounce up to “the curse of Tony Dokoupil,” a saying inside the halls of the community that refers to a sequence of misfortunes which have befallen the new anchor.
Dokoupil has had a honest share of snafus since taking the helm on Jan. 5, beginning off with a teleprompter failure. More not too long ago, he anchored an ill-fated broadcast from Taiwan after the community didn’t secure a visa to cowl the US-China summit in Beijing in May.
During one of the broadcasts, the show’s cameraman abruptly collapsed from exhaustion, The Post first reported, giving rise to whispers that Dokoupil is “cursed.”
Last month, the show mistakenly aired an image of rapper Kanye West as an alternative of Sean “Diddy” Combs in its report on President Trump mulling a pardon of Combs, as reported by The Post.
CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss put Dokoupil on the helm of the “Evening News” in January. Getty Images
Dokoupil’s unhealthy luck struck CBS’ July 4th particular, as properly. Dokoupil, who was co-anchoring the community’s three-hour particular from the National Mall in Washington, DC, was amongst these evacuated resulting from incoming thunderstorms, placing a crimp within the community’s deliberate programming.
Sources on the time stated this system seemed like “amateur hour” and famous that the primetime show seemed to be scrubbed from CBS’ streaming service Paramount+, the place it had been live-streamed, in addition to from CBS.com.
CBS News didn’t return requests for remark.
