Tony Dokoupil’s job hinges on breaking news. He has recently been taking precious seconds to try and knit some of it together.
On a recent Friday night, the “CBS Evening News” anchor stopped the rat-a-tat-tat delivery of headlines for which his program and similar ones are known, just to reflect. He delivered a short monologue focused on the ramped-up construction of data centers across the U.S. Dokoupil simply wanted an answer to the following: “In an election year where Americans are mostly divided on the issues, why are so many united around opposition” to the new facilities?
To answer the query, Dokoupil relied on video, charts and an oral essay expressed in his own writing. Americans, Dokoupil said, “oppose them because they are as big as airports, draw more power than a small city, use as much water as the same and support a technology, AI, whose own founders say could be an existential risk to life here on earth.”
Since July 1, “CBS Evening News” has rolled out four segments of this type — known as “The Big Question” — and producers hope they will serve to grab viewers with frank discussions tied to the news of the day.
There are many questions Americans ask in their daily conversations “that for whatever reason don’t get baldly and directly asked in the press,” says Dokoupil, 45, during a recent interview. “I’m talking about the origin of COVID, the Wuhan question. Is Joe Biden mentally capable of another term? How is it legal for Donald Trump to enrich himself and his family while in office? These are questions people are talking about, but don’t feel like they can be asked. There is a cost to asking them. We decided we’re going to ask them and we going to do our best to give people an answer.” In some cases, the monologue will do the trick; in others, Dokoupil may enlist a topic expert to help figure things out.
“Big Question” segments have been devoted to asking whether the Trump administration can really win a battle for the Strait of Hormuz; why Democrats stood by Graham Plantner, the Maine candidate for U.S. Senator even as troubling elements of his background were revealed; and whether President Trump’s gains from cryptocurrency ventures are legal and ethical. Such an element is not usual for evening news, and that is one reason why it’s of interest, says Kim Harvey, the show’s executive producer: “We get a chance to distinguish ourselves from our competitors and also serve our audience in a better way.”
Evening news viewers expect the anchors to deliver headlines, but not necessarily to use them as jumping-off points for analysis. Walter Cronkie told viewers “That’s the way it is” every evening but did not push the audience to consider why things were that way. NBC News’ Lester Holt attempted to introduce some analysis to “NBC Nightly News” in the back half of his tenure, offering at times a bit of commentary on particularly troubling events, such as the rise of deaths from coronavirus or the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore. The idea, Holt told Variety last year, was to acknowledge tragedy or uncommon events.
One industry consultant believes news shows ought to embrace such stuff — and with more speed. The evening-news shows “certainly serve an audience, but it is an audience that’s aging, and we have this large audience of younger people who have been underserved in their minds by traditional media platforms,” says Jaime Spencer, chief operating officer of Magid, which advises TV stations and media companies. “They are relying very heavily on creators, social media, and those types of providers who are more charged with opinion.” A “Big Question” segment at ‘CBS Evening News” will offer viewers something beyond the headlines they’ve likely already seen online during their day.
There’s even hope within CBS News that such segments can help the division reach new crowds. Dokoupil’s “Evening News” also offers “The Good Stuff,” an end-of-show segment meant to provide a moment of uplift from something going on during what the anchor always calls “another day in America.” The short pieces give older, traditional TV viewers something different to watch, and can also fit in well in digital venues, where shorter form content is the order of the day.
Whether the viewer is watching linear TV or digital video, says Dokoupil, the new “Question” format “feels authentic and it feels like a person is just talking to you about the day’s events.”
Dokoupil started his tenure at “CBS Evening News” under intense scrutiny. He was placed in the broadcast by Bari Weiss, an opinion journalist and founder of The Free Press who had recently been installed as the editor in chief of CBS News despite lacking substantial experience managing a TV newsroom. Weiss wants CBS News to be provocative and more relevant to viewers who spend more of their time on digital outlets, where individual influencers and independent journalists hold increasing sway. Weiss is known for holding pro-Israel and anti-woke stances and her reign started as Paramount CEO David Ellison made a concerted effort to appeal to the Trump administration, which has a say over whether his company can acquire Warner Bros. Discovery — the deal is now heading to a trial -– and has worked tirelessly to undermine the credibility of mainstream media outlets, including CBS News. As a result, much of the attention paid to Dokoupil has also serves to determine how much influence Weiss has over the program and the stories it presents.
Any new anchor would find such a scenario challenging. Dokoupil was rushed into the anchor slot quickly after the exits of predecessors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, who held the job before he did. The duo presided overan unorthodox two-anchor program that ceded viewers, and, eventually, ratings. Dokoupil had to work out kinks on air, in real time, and the program’s overall audience still rests below 4 million, a demarcation point for CBS News management in the past. Now the anchor and Harvey believe they’re finding new rhythm, and a routine that allows them to start adding new pieces to the show.
“We wanted to really stabilize the broadcast and dig out of the hole we were in,” Dokoupil says.
“CBS Evening News” has been mired in third place for decades, well behind ABC News’ top-rated “World News Tonight” with David Muir, and NBC News’ “NBC Nightly News,” anchored by Tom Llamas, who took over the show from Holt in 2025. Part of the reason for its status: CBS. Over the past decade, network executives have overhauled the program time and again, asking viewers to make connections with anchors including Scott Pelley, Norah O’Donnell and Jeff Glor, only to revise plans every few years. The show generated around $110 million in advertising in 2025, according to data from Guideline, a tracker of ad spendings. Among CBS News programs, only “CBS Mornings” brought in more.
The show’s status is unlikely to change in the near term. Indeed, season to date as of July 19, “CBS Evening News” viewership among people between 25 and 54 — the demographic most coveted by advertisers in news programming — is off 13% from the year-earlier period, according to data from Nielsen. At the same time, NBC’s Llamas has made some inroads against Muir in the demo, according to Nielsen, meaning there is still some audience that is open to changing their evening habit. Executives have been encouraged in recent weeks: “CBS Evening News” in July made slight gains in overall viewership and well as its audience between 25 and 54.
So much of evening news is devoted to an anchor making a few comments before throwing to a “package” of recorded elements from a reporter stationed outside the studio, says one person familiar with CBS News operations, and CBS hopes “to find moments to differentiate” the show from its rivals with segments that feature a different sort of voice.
Dokoupil has tried to provide one. Many of his remarks, in which he has a strong hand in writing, contain phrases that are clever or arch. “Good evening,” he said one day while opening the program. “In the middle of war, on the eve of peace talks and as a U.S. spacecraft hurtles toward earth, First Lady Melania Trump stepped up to a bank of cameras inside the White House today to address Jeffrey Epstein — a topic that may surprise you, because it certainly surprised us.”
When covering a push-and-pull between the Pentagon and the A.I. company Anthropic, Dokoupil told viewers that “normally a Pentagon contract story is something we’d skip, but this one could change the future of warfare, and, even in a week like this, could be the most important story we cover.” In April, he acknowledged the helter-skelter nature of President Trump’s stance toward fighting Iran. “If you are struggling to follow what’s happening, you are not alone,” he said, adding: “Here we are, about 48 hours from the deadline and seemingly as close to renewed fighting as we are to peace.”
He hopes the storytelling on the show will help draw attention to the work of the many reporters CBS News has out in the field.
One of Dokoupil’s first jobs was working at Newsweek on the weekly magazine’s “Periscope” section, known for offering short but stylized takes on the news, including a popular “Conventional Wisdom” feature that uses “up” and “down” arrows to show the standing of major newsmakers and closely followed topics. “I constantly return to my experience” there, Dokoupil says, noting he believes there “should be a certain bite and snap to the writing” on CBS’ evening-news program.
He also hopes the “Big Question” will help forge a tighter bond with viewers in an era when a cacophony of outlets has undermined the credibility of many news sources. “You’re asking something that you know the viewers are thinking,” he explains. “You are saying to them, ‘We are looking at the same reality. I see what you’re seeing, and here’s what we know about it.’ “
Dokoupil is likely to keep asking a “Big Question” on selected newscasts. And he will be called to answer an even bigger one: Can the anchor peel off any of the audience watching competitors like Llamas and Muir, or some of the people who favor upstart news formats?
Evening news programs need to “take some shots,” says Spencer, the consultant. “And it’s going to take more than just exiting traditional execution to break out.”