{"id":30887,"date":"2026-08-07T08:51:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T03:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=30887"},"modified":"2026-08-07T08:51:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T03:51:46","slug":"awkward-tony-dokoupils-fill-in-delivers-cbs-evening-news-best-ratings-in-four-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=30887","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Awkward\u2019: Tony Dokoupil\u2019s Fill-In Delivers CBS Evening News\u2019 Best Ratings in Four Months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5736354\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5736354\" class=\"wp-image-5736354 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/am13.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2026\/06\/tony-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"Tony Dokoupil\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1704\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-5736354\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo by Anthony Behar\/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Tony Dokoupil&#8217;s<\/strong> two-week summer vacation has produced an &#8220;awkward result&#8221; for CBS News, with his temporary replacement posting the <em>CBS Evening News&#8217;<\/em> strongest weekly audience in months, according to figures cited by <strong>Oliver Darcy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>As was revealed in the Thursday <a href=\"https:\/\/www.status.news\/p\/cbs-evening-news-ratings-tony-dokoupil-matt-gutman\">edition<\/a> of Status News, with Darcy calling the matter &#8220;an unexpected and somewhat awkward result for CBS News,&#8221; <strong>Matt Gutman<\/strong> averaged 4.1 million viewers during his first week filling in for Dokoupil, marking the program&#8217;s best performance in 17 weeks and the first time the broadcast has topped the 4 million-viewer mark since late March.<\/p>\n<p>As Darcy noted, <em>CBS Evening News<\/em> has struggled to consistently reach that audience level since editor-in-chief <strong>Bari Weiss<\/strong> oversaw a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/tv\/just-in-major-shakeup-brewing-at-60-minutes-as-bari-weiss-fires-ep-tanya-simon\/\">major overhaul<\/a> of the broadcast earlier this year, despite executives once considering it the &#8220;minimum acceptable audience&#8221; for the program. While Dokoupil hit an even 4 million viewers during the week of June 22, Status reported that he had not exceeded that threshold since averaging 4.2 million viewers during the week of March 30.<\/p>\n<p>The figures also seem to have fueled questions about Dokoupil taking a two-week vacation <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/tv\/first-day-big-problems-here-tony-dokoupil-had-some-issues-on-cbs-evening-news\/\">less than a year<\/a> into his tenure as anchor.<\/p>\n<p>One source, who Darcy described as a veteran television executive, told Status, &#8220;Summer is when the second and third place networks try to make progress against the first place anchor who goes on vacation. In this case, the third place anchor took off for two weeks \u2014 a baffling move given his collapsing show \u2014 and his substitute outclassed him in the ratings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That same source added of Doukoupil&#8217;s absence that they&#8217;d &#8220;never seen this before,&#8221; and that the situation amounts to \u201canother dagger in Tony\u2019s neck.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, Darcy reported that within the CBS newsroom, employees were struck by how &#8220;likeable&#8221; and &#8220;personable&#8221; Gutman proved to be.<\/p>\n<p>In April, <em>Vanity Fair <\/em>Washington correspondent and former Mediaite editor-in-chief <strong>Aidan McLaughlin\u00a0<\/strong>published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/story\/tony-dokoupil\">profile<\/a> for which he interviewed \u201cmore than 20 current and former CBS staffers and industry insiders\u201d about Dokoupil\u2019s role at the network, with one correspondent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/tv\/tony-dokoupil-excoriated-by-his-own-cbs-colleagues-in-splashy-vanity-fair-profile-useful-idiot-but-good-eye-candy\/\">describing<\/a> him as a &#8220;useful idiot&#8221; in Weiss&#8217; eyes, and another bashing him as &#8220;deeply lacking in self-awareness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/tv\/awkward-tony-dokoupils-fill-in-delivers-cbs-evening-news-best-ratings-in-four-months\/\">\u2018Awkward\u2019: Tony Dokoupil\u2019s Fill-In Delivers CBS Evening News\u2019 Best Ratings in Four Months<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\">Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Photo by Anthony Behar\/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images) Tony Dokoupil&#8217;s two-week summer vacation has produced an &#8220;awkward result&#8221; for CBS News, with his temporary replacement posting the CBS Evening News&#8217; strongest weekly audience in months, according to figures cited by Oliver Darcy. As was revealed in the Thursday edition of Status News, with Darcy calling&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/am13.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2026\/06\/tony-scaled.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}