There is no material non-liberal audience for mainstream news
By 
As Josh Marshall said during the brief period in which Tucker Carlson was pretending that the Daily Caller was going to be a serious hard news outlet, if conservatives wanted hard news it would have already existed. The tenure of Bari Weiss at CBS gives us yet another case in point:
When Bari Weiss took the reins of CBS News in October, her message was clear: that the public had lost trust in the network and that major change was needed to win viewers back and return it to its glory days. But through a series of actions over her turbulent six-month tenure as editor in chief, it appears the proud anti-woke warrior has instead helped destroy that trust—something that is now laid bare in the network’s rapidly shrinking ratings. Indeed, new ratings data obtained by Status isn’t just bad for Weiss. It is catastrophic.
With the first quarter set to wrap at week’s end, Weiss’ relaunched “CBS Evening News” with Tony Dokoupil is on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings obtained by Status. But that’s not the only ugly data point Weiss will have to answer for. According to the data obtained by Status, “CBS Mornings” is pacing toward its lowest-rated quarter on record in both total audience and the key demo.
Together, the numbers tell a story Weiss will have a hard time spinning. Under the 41-year-old’s watch, the network’s two flagship daily news programs are seeing their audiences collapse. It’s a remarkable feat, given the unrelenting torrent of headlines emerging from Washington and—now thanks to a war—across the world. In fact, the numbers from CBS News are an anomaly in the current television news landscape, where ABC News and NBC News, are both set to post year-over-year gains in total audience in both the mornings and evenings.
“Bari believed it couldn’t get any worse at CBS News and that everything needed to be blown up to turn it around,” a veteran television news executive commented to Status. “Guess what? Wrong again. It actually can get worse. Ratings can go even lower.”
[Ian Faith voice] I wouldn’t worry about it, there’s not much going on in the news this year.
For Dokoupil, in particular, it’s an especially brutal outcome because the bar was so low for him to begin with. A key reason he was seated in the prestigious anchor chair was because the show prior to him, anchored by Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson, was posting weak numbers, as we reported last year. At a minimum, the expectation was that a high-profile launch—complete with Dokoupil criss-crossing the country on an expensive “Live From America” tour—would deliver at least a modest bump. Instead, under Dokoupil, the ratings have sunk to dangerous lows, even dipping below 4 million total viewers on some nights.
Of course, it is not hard to see why. Viewers are smart. They understand that under David Ellison’s ownership, and with Weiss at the helm, CBS News has charted a new course for the network—one that is friendlier to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he leads. That has played out in a string of high-profile incidents in recent months: Dokoupil’s cringe-inducing on-air “salute” to Marco Rubio; the ride-along segment with Kristi Noem during an immigration raid; the both-sides report marking the January 6 insurrection; the softball Trump interview, in which the supposedly transparent broadcast did not report a brazen legal threat Karoline Leavitt delivered on behalf of the president to the program; and so much more.
That is not to mention Weiss’ unprecedented intervention stalling the “60 Minutes” story on the notorious CECOT prison in Venezuela, her failed attempts to recruit Fox News and MAGA personalities, her chasing away of talent like Anderson Cooper and Scott MacFarlane, and more.
“The first rule of television medicine is do no harm—and Bari has done so much harm,” a television news veteran noted to Status.
Suffice to say, CBS News’ new direction may please Ellison and Trump, but it does not appear to be pleasing the CBS News audience. Instead, it is quite obviously driving loyal viewers away, while failing to attract a new audience. (Spoiler: As we’ve previously noted, it is all but impossible for outlets like CBS News to win over any meaningful swath of the Fox News audience.)
It could be that the Ellisons are just interested in pure sabotage and so they just wanted this, but my guess is that they’ve looked at the Free Bari and Fox News and think it’s possible for them to do witless regime propaganda and make money. But in the context of mainstream journalism it just doesn’t work.
Speaking of which:
Jeff Bezos’ The WaPo saw the largest print circulation decline among the top 25 newspapers, plunging some 21% last year, followed by Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times, dropping 20%. [Press Gazette]
We’ll return to Bezos in a follow-up post given some good recent reporting on his controlled demolition of the Post. But a lot of media moguls are apparently going to have to learn this lesson the hard way.