One of Bari Weiss’ top priorities as editor in chief of CBS News has been to chart a future for the network’s sagging evening news broadcast, which has languished behind its competitors on NBC and ABC. On Wednesday, Weiss promoted Tony Dokoupil, the co-host of the network’s morning show, to serve as the next anchor of CBS Evening News starting 5 January.
In her first few weeks on the job, Weiss expressed interest in a handful of top anchors from rival networks, including Bret Baier and Dana Perino at Fox News, but both are locked into long-term contracts. Looking internally, Dokoupil, 44, was seen as a strong contender, along with Norah O’Donnell, who anchored the show from 2019 to 2025.
Picking a new evening news anchor was also a matter of necessity. Earlier this year, the show launched with a dual anchor format, shedding viewers in the process. But both of the anchors involved – John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois – have already announced plans to leave the network, leaving CBS without anyone to host the show going into the new year.
“We live in a time in which many people have lost trust in the media. Tony Dokoupil is the person to win it back,” Weiss said in a statement on Wednesday. “That’s because he believes in old school journalistic values: asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead and holding power to account. Americans hungry for fairness will see that on display night after night.”
Tom Cibrowski, president of CBS News, said Dokoupil “is what everyone wants in an evening-news anchor – authentic, compassionate, unafraid”.
After serving as a correspondent on MSNBC, Dokoupil joined CBS News in 2016 and has served as co-host of CBS Mornings since 2019.
In the fall of 2024, he became embroiled in a significant internal – and external – controversy at the network, after he conducted a combative interview of the author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Dokoupil suggested during the interview that Coates’ recently-released book could have been found in the backpack of an “extremist”, sparking significant blowback on social media, where clips of the confrontation quickly went viral.
The controversy was turbo-charged after a top CBS News executive, Adrienne Roark, told network staffers during a morning staff meeting that Dokoupil’s interview with Coates violated editorial guidelines about impartiality and had been “addressed” with the host.
But Roark, and her boss Wendy McMahon, were quickly undermined by Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, who said at an industry event a few days later that CBS News leadership had made a “bad mistake” in upbraiding Dokoupil.
The media newsletter Status first reported on Monday evening that CBS News had landed on Dokoupil for the role. “I’m honored to join a fearless team at this important moment, and with what I can promise is a commitment to trust and the plain truth,” Dokoupil said in a statement.
The network said that Dokoupil will begin his tenure anchoring the show with a cross-country tour.
While NBC News and ABC News have largely enjoyed consistency in their evening anchormen, CBS News has gone through a series of hosts over the last 15 years, with one network staffer likening the evening anchor chair to “the electric chair” because the role does not tend to last.
After the lengthy tenure of anchorman Dan Rather ended in controversy in 2005, after the network aired a flawed report about George W Bush’s service in the Texas air national guard, Bob Schieffer filled the role on an interim basis for about a year.
CBS shelled out a lot of money to bring in NBC star Katie Couric for the role, but she left in 2011, after five years. Asked by an interviewer at the time why her broadcast remained behind NBC and ABC in viewers, Couric responded: “I believe we were in third place for 13 years before I got here, and I think habits, particularly with an evening news broadcast, move at a glacial pace.”
Couric was replaced by Scott Pelley, who also lasted about six years before he was ousted without a successor in place. There was Anthony Mason, who anchored the show for a few months in 2017, and then Jeff Glor, who lasted less than two years in the role.
Despite a great deal of fanfare, and a move of the show from New York City to Washington DC, O’Donnell was also unable to dramatically increase viewership in her tenure as anchor, when she was replaced by Dickerson and DuBois, who had the shortest recent tenure as permanent hosts. Under the guidance of Bill Owens, legendary executive producer of 60 Minutes, the CBS Evening News had tried a new format prioritizing longer segments less tied to the ins and outs of national politics. That format did not prove to be a hit with viewers either.
“Good luck to him,” the CBS News staffer said of Dokoupil. “He’s gonna need it.”
