I really miss Norah O’Donnell on The CBS Evening News and apparently, I’m not alone.
The replacement show, with Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson, is down 37% in the demo ratings from a year ago according to Adweek.
The DuBois/Dickerson newscast is also down 17% in total viewers from this time last year.
Not surprisingly, the people at CBS News who made the switch, like Wendy McMahon, are gone from the network.
The word now is that Bari Weiss, the conservative blogger with no TV News experience, may be ready to make yet another change. Reports suggest she’s thinking of hiring Fox News’s only moderate anchor, Brett Baier, to take over the news desk.
Will that work? Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave over what’s happening with The CBS Evening News. One by one new producers come in and make stupid changes, frustrating the audience.
The current iteration has the double anchors narrating a feature like magazine instead of a hard hitting show a la number 1, ABC. On that show, David Muir — who’s no Peter Jennings — arrives on the air at 6:30pm exclaiming “Breaking News!” and “What we just learned” even if it’s five hours old and a story about a cat up a tree.
Meantime, NBC’s Tom Llamas — for whom NBC Lester Holt forced into semi-retirement — isn’t doing much better. His show is down from last year at this time. Lester was beloved and had no reason to make an exit. NBC thought Llamas, 20 years younger, would grab a new crowd. Instead, 9% of the key demo audience of 25 to 49 year old viewers left the peacock.
Where did all these people go? To Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and so on, where they’re picking up clips of stories and not sitting for a whole half hour to find out if Donald Trump has replaced the Lincoln Memorial with a Steak n’ Shake.
Also: morning network news shows are still in the same order, although the Today show is nipping at the heels of Good Morning America. Today actually beat GMA in the key demo, an and almost tying them in total viewers. CBS Mornings is always third. Adweek says all three shows are in overall ratings decline.
