Tony Dokoupil to serve as anchor of CBS Evening News | Media

Considered one of Bari Weiss’ prime priorities as editor in chief of CBS Information has been to chart a future for the community’s sagging night information broadcast, which has languished behind its opponents on NBC and ABC. On Wednesday, Weiss promoted Tony Dokoupil, the co-host of the community’s morning present, to function the subsequent anchor of CBS Night Information beginning 5 January.In her first few weeks on the job, Weiss expressed curiosity in a handful of prime anchors from rival networks, together with Bret Baier and Dana Perino at Fox Information, however each are locked into long-term contracts. Wanting internally, Dokoupil, 44, was seen as a powerful contender, together with Norah O’Donnell, who anchored the present from 2019 to 2025.Choosing a brand new night information anchor was additionally a matter of necessity. Earlier this 12 months, the present launched with a twin anchor format, shedding viewers within the course of. However each of the anchors concerned – John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois – have already introduced plans to go away the community, leaving CBS with out anybody to host the present going into the brand new 12 months.“We reside in a time during which many individuals have misplaced belief within the media. Tony Dokoupil is the particular person to win it again,” Weiss stated in a press release on Wednesday. “That’s as a result of he believes in old-fashioned journalistic values: asking the arduous questions, following the information wherever they lead and holding energy to account. Individuals hungry for equity will see that on show evening after evening.”Tom Cibrowski, president of CBS Information, stated Dokoupil “is what everybody needs in an evening-news anchor – genuine, compassionate, unafraid”.After serving as a correspondent on MSNBC, Dokoupil joined CBS Information in 2016 and has served as co-host of CBS Mornings since 2019.Within the fall of 2024, he grew to become embroiled in a big inner – and exterior – controversy on the community, after he carried out a combative interview of the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. Dokoupil advised through the interview that Coates’ recently-released e-book may have been discovered within the backpack of an “extremist”, sparking important blowback on social media, the place clips of the confrontation rapidly went viral.The controversy was turbo-charged after a prime CBS Information govt, Adrienne Roark, advised community staffers throughout a morning employees assembly that Dokoupil’s interview with Coates violated editorial pointers about impartiality and had been “addressed” with the host.However Roark, and her boss Wendy McMahon, had been rapidly undermined by Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, who stated at an trade occasion just a few days later that CBS Information management had made a “unhealthy mistake” in upbraiding Dokoupil.The media publication Standing first reported on Monday night that CBS Information had landed on Dokoupil for the function. “I’m honored to hitch a fearless workforce at this necessary second, and with what I can promise is a dedication to belief and the plain fact,” Dokoupil stated in a press release.The community stated that Dokoupil will start his tenure anchoring the present with a cross-country tour.Whereas NBC Information and ABC Information have largely loved consistency of their night anchormen, CBS Information has gone via a sequence of hosts over the past 15 years, with one community staffer likening the night anchor chair to “the electrical chair” as a result of the function doesn’t are inclined to final.After the prolonged tenure of anchorman Dan Relatively led to controversy in 2005, after the community aired a flawed report about George W Bush’s service within the Texas air nationwide guard, Bob Schieffer stuffed the function on an interim foundation for a couple of 12 months.CBS shelled out some huge cash to usher in NBC star Katie Couric for the function, however she left in 2011, after 5 years. Requested by an interviewer on the time why her broadcast remained behind NBC and ABC in viewers, Couric responded: “I imagine we had been in third place for 13 years earlier than I acquired right here, and I believe habits, significantly with a night information broadcast, transfer at a glacial tempo.”Couric was changed by Scott Pelley, who additionally lasted about six years earlier than he was ousted with no successor in place. There was Anthony Mason, who anchored the present for just a few months in 2017, after which Jeff Glor, who lasted lower than two years within the function.Regardless of quite a lot of fanfare, and a transfer of the present from New York Metropolis to Washington DC, O’Donnell was additionally unable to dramatically enhance viewership in her tenure as anchor, when she was changed by Dickerson and DuBois, who had the shortest latest tenure as everlasting hosts. Below the steerage of Invoice Owens, legendary govt producer of 60 Minutes, the CBS Night Information had tried a brand new format prioritizing longer segments much less tied to the ins and outs of nationwide politics. That format didn’t show to be successful with viewers both.“Good luck to him,” the CBS Information staffer stated of Dokoupil. “He’s gonna want it.”