Matt Gutman stepped into the anchor chair for Tony Dokoupil and immediately gave CBS Evening News a ratings jolt. In his first week filling in during Dokoupil’s two-week vacation, Gutman averaged 4.1 million viewers in July, the program’s best-rated week in 17 weeks.
That number matters because CBS Evening News had been stuck below the 4 million mark for weeks before Gutman’s run, and a substitute anchor usually does not improve the picture. Dokoupil’s last higher week came on March 30, when he averaged 4.2 million viewers, making Gutman’s result the show’s cleanest breakout since then. The momentum also arrives just as readers are paying closer attention to Tony Dokoupil, whose tenure has included a failed visa effort during CBS’s May China coverage, a Fourth of July evacuation from the National Mall when severe weather hit a three-hour primetime special, and a mistaken photo swap in a report about Sean Diddy Combs and a possible presidential pardon.
The ratings bump does not erase the larger question around the chair Dokoupil left vacant. CBS has not said whether Gutman’s strong debut will change how it uses him after the vacation ends, but the first week showed that the audience will follow the broadcast even when the regular anchor is off. For a network under scrutiny, that is a rare piece of good news.
