New Anchr of CBS Evening News’ Begins Run With Pete Hegseth Interview
Michele Crowe/CBS
Tony Dokoupil, the anchor and vet of CBS News’ morning program, was set to launched his tenure on Monday, but stunning attack on Venezuela by U.S. forces followed by an extraction of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, made his appearance all the more necessary–and immediate.
Indeed, top personnel at other networks, including Tom Llamas at NBC and Kaitlan Collins at CNN, intended to show up for weekend duty on their networks’ evening schedules.
So here was Dokoupil, on Saturday evening, working to brief viewers on the latest developments, aided by correspondents Charlie D’Agata and Scott MacFarlane — and a three-segment interview with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Viewers have expected to see Dokoupil from behind the desk, talking about the average Americans. He had appeared in a promo telling potential viewers that “on too many stories the press missed the story. Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.”
Saturday’s “CBS Evening News” had no direct input from average Americans, and Hegseth, who enjoys a level of power most people in the U.S. do not, could certainly be viewed as “elite.”
Dokoupil has many challenges ahead. He has been picked to foster new audience ties by Bari Weiss, the new editor of CBS News. She arrived at the Paramount Skydance-backed outlet after it spent $150 million on her opinion site, The Free Press. Weiss has no experience running a mainstream TV-news organization, and it has begun to show.
There have been controversies over her cancelling a fully-vetted “60 Minutes” report, and staffers have grown frustrated that continued focus on her managerial decisions has taken attention away from serious journalism produced by CBS News reporters.
CBS News was early to break news of the Venezeula strikes in the week hours of Saturday morning, as well as key details about some of the planning for the operations.
Dokoupil’s early-January start was unveiled three weeks ago, giving CBS no time to seed the ground for his arrival. TV network usually spend longer periods of time touting the looming arrival of a new evening anchor, and often send that journalist to meet with executives and staffers at affiliates around the nation, where local anchors are asked to push viewers to the national telecast that follows. Three weeks leaves little time to use outdoor advertising or other promotional tactics to spur interest, and a digital video distributed this week showing Dokoupil striving to get attention from passers-by in Grand Central Terminal did not suggest he was well known.
With the new anchor’s arrival, CBS has tweaked the look of the venerable program, which has ties to the revered Walter Cronkite.
The screen is less cluttered by graphics, distracting the viewer less from what the anchor has to say. Whether Dokoupil would have more detail to offer, after whole day of cable news and broadcast networks’ special reports on the subject, remained to be seen.
In the end, CBS News ceded most of its time to Hegseth.
Dokoupil was supposed to start his run on the program by visiting various U.S. towns. He was holding forth at KPIX, CBS’ San Francisco station Saturday evening. He is slated to return to New York for his Monday broadcast, delaying plans that are slated to have him start traveling by mid next week.
Dokoupil signed off Saturday night with the phrase, “That’s another day in America and the world.”
CBS News 2026: Tony Dokoupil, New Anchor, Begins New Era?
New Anchr of CBS Evening News’ Begins Run With Pete Hegseth Interview
Saturday’s “CBS Evening News” had no direct input from average Americans, and Hegseth, who enjoys a level of power most people in the U.S. do not, could certainly be viewed as “elite.”
Dokoupil has many challenges ahead. He has been picked to foster new audience ties by Bari Weiss, the new editor of CBS News. She arrived at the Paramount Skydance-backed outlet after it spent $150 million on her opinion site, The Free Press. Weiss has no experience running a mainstream TV-news organization, and it has begun to show.
There have been controversies over her cancelling a fully-vetted “60 Minutes” report, and staffers have grown frustrated that continued focus on her managerial decisions has taken attention away from serious journalism produced by CBS News reporters.
CBS News was early to break news of the Venezeula strikes in the week hours of Saturday morning, as well as key details about some of the planning for the operations.
Dokoupil’s early-January start was unveiled three weeks ago, giving CBS no time to seed the ground for his arrival. TV network usually spend longer periods of time touting the looming arrival of a new evening anchor, and often send that journalist to meet with executives and staffers at affiliates around the nation, where local anchors are asked to push viewers to the national telecast that follows. Three weeks leaves little time to use outdoor advertising or other promotional tactics to spur interest, and a digital video distributed this week showing Dokoupil striving to get attention from passers-by in Grand Central Terminal did not suggest he was well known.
With the new anchor’s arrival, CBS has tweaked the look of the venerable program, which has ties to the revered Walter Cronkite.
The screen is less cluttered by graphics, distracting the viewer less from what the anchor has to say. Whether Dokoupil would have more detail to offer, after whole day of cable news and broadcast networks’ special reports on the subject, remained to be seen.
In the end, CBS News ceded most of its time to Hegseth.
Dokoupil was supposed to start his run on the program by visiting various U.S. towns. He was holding forth at KPIX, CBS’ San Francisco station Saturday evening. He is slated to return to New York for his Monday broadcast, delaying plans that are slated to have him start traveling by mid next week.