CBS wants to get back in the battle for evening-news viewers with a new take on the format that looks very little like the evening news viewers have come to know.
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The network plans to rebuild its long-running “CBS Evening News,” retooling anchors, format and segments in a bid to make the half-hour once led by Walter Cronkite more valuable for modern news viewers who don’t recognize the show as the cultural touchstone it was in the 1960s and 70s.
After the 2024 election, with current anchor Norah O’Donnell stepping away for a new senior correspondent role at CBS News, executives at the Paramount Global news operation will put the show under the aegis of Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” Working with a new on-air team that includes co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, chief weathercaster Lonnie Quinn and Washington-based “Face The Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan, Owens intends to create a new show that works to break news and offer more depth, rather than trying to run down dozens of items that surfaced earlier in the day in the space of less than 30 minutes.
“We are removing the clutter,” says Owens, during an interview. “We are not going to be dealing with the things we think people might want to see, and we are going to be about real serious reporting. We are getting back to our beats, listening to our reporters in the field about what they have, not worrying about the headlines online or in the newspapers.”
Correspondents from “60 Minutes” will appear frequently to break news they have discovered or tease some of the work they are preparing for the Sunday newsmagazine, and the anchors will get more than 90 seconds or so to delve into an important story or relay on-the-ground reportage. The program will once again be based in New York City, after moving with O’Donnell to Washington, D.C. for the past few years.
“I believe we can resurrect it, do it a bit better and make people feel smarter,” Owens adds.
CBS has tried to recast “Evening News” for contemporary audiences before, and found the task a difficult one. Katie Couric took the anchor chair in 2006 with a mandate to refresh the format with more human interest stories and interviews. Despite her hard work, CBS found viewers didn’t necessarily gravitate to the changes. Couric left CBS after a five-year stint.
Little about the program has seemed to please the network since that time. “CBS Evening News” runs a perennial third to its rivals at ABC and NBC, “World News Tonight” and “NBC Nightly News.” Some of that is due to the CBS station lineup, which tends not to fare as well in various local markets as those tied to ABC. And while ABC and NBC rarely switch out their evening anchors, CBS has done so with relative frequency, tapping Harry Smith, Scott Pelley, Anthony Mason and Jeff Glor. The turnover has likely contributed to the viewer erosion. O’Donnell will leave after more than five years of “Evening News” duties.
During the week of July 22, “CBS Evening News” captured an average of 4.38 million viewers, compared with nearly 6.19 million for “NBC Nightly News” and 7.59 million for “World News Tonight.”
There are many who believe TV’s evening-news format needs to be reinvigorated. “The network news anchors have shrunk in so many ways from the glory days of Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw — in importance, fame, audience, and salary,” says Mark Feldstein, chairman of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland. “Now they’re just rotating news presenters who generate little viewer loyalty — certainly not enough to earn the big salaries of yesteryear.”
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O’Donnell’s move to step away from the program after the 2024 election has spurred a cycle of speculation about CBS’ motives and the place of the evening-news anchor in a world where a fountain of information is available from the touch of a smartphone screen well before the evening-news programs kick off at 6:30 p.m. on the east coast. Paramount is in the midst of a sales process to Skydance Media, and has grappled with subscriber losses at its cable networks and declines in ad sales, and the company’s leaders-to-be have spoken openly about the need to stem losses.
There is no backing away from TV’s evening-news battle, says Wendy McMahon, president and CEO of CBS’ news, stations and syndication businesses. “I have a desire to win,” she says, during an interview. “What part of this suggests cuts or less ambition or less commitment?”
Under McMahon, CBS has worked to knit together its team of national news correspondents with the journalists in the newsrooms of its local stations. And personnel are being given more duties. Dickerson, who already anchors a weekday show on CBS News’ streaming outlet, will continue to appear there, and DuBois will retain some anchoring duties at WCBS. Owens will continue to oversee “60 Minutes.”
The use of DuBois and Quinn, both longtime presences at New York’s WCBS, is telling. McMahon’s team recently launched a new “whip-around” streaming newscast that relies on two co-anchors –- Vladimir Duthiers from CBS News and Reed Cowan, from San Francisco’s KPIX — who steer viewers to breaking news and accounts from reporters on the ground at the CBS stations.
CBS News viewers may have already seen some of the new team in action. Dickerson, DuBois and Brennan helped anchor recent coverage of both the assassination attempt on former President Trump, and President Biden’s decision to exit as the White House nominee of the Democrats.
Owens wants to infuse the newscast with some of elements of the “60 Minutes” mission — something that was more common in the past, with luminaries such as Mike Wallace stopping at “Evening News” to offer breaking items from pieces they were formulating. Cecilia Vega, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, recently appeared on “CBS Evening News” to reveal the existence of a video that raises questions about whether the Saudi government provided assistance to some of the 9/11 hijackers, news she found as part of a “60 Minutes” piece she is preparing for the fall. A “60 Minutes” bug appeared on screen during Vega’s appearance, and viewers were told that more reporting on the matter was expected to be revealed in the next season of the newsmagazine.
Owens will have some help. Guy Campanile, a producer at “60 Minutes” who worked at “Evening News” during Pelley’s tenure, will become executive producer of the program’s day to day operations. Jerry Cipriano, a former “Evening News” writer and editor, will return as the show’s senior news editor and senior producer, with a focus on story selection. Adam Verdugo, who currently serves as O’Donnell’s executive producer , is expected to stay with the program through the 2024 election and assist with the show’s transition back to New York.
There likely will not be a signature “60 Minutes” stopwatch clicking away at “CBS Evening News,” but executive may still hear some tick-tick-tick. In an era when streaming video and social media have siphoned consumer attention and advertising dollars away from TV, the business has less room for error CBS’ efforts to remake a format so familiar to its audience is bound to draw plenty of scrutiny. Executives no doubt hope some of those curious viewers will stay.
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