CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” beat a crucial metric for the first time under new and heavily scrutinized managers but only managed to eke out a small boost to its ratings despite a robust football lead-in. The CBS newsmagazine lured an average of 10.2 million viewers on Sunday, when it offered an in-depth interview with Republican Senator Thom Tillis; a probe of how the U.S. workforce may be affected by A.I.;’ and a look at how the friars at an Italy’s Basilica of Saint Francis using lasers, high-tech cameras and advanced technology to repair the 13th-century edifice. Those figures surpassed last season’s average audience for the series, which came in at about 9.1 million — the first time this season the show has been able to do so.
At the same time, the show was only able to win 50,000 more viewers than it did in its year-earlier broadcast, when it snared approximately 10.15 million, according to Nielsen figures. The Sunday broadcast lured approximately 2 million viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 — the demographic most coveted by advertisers in news programming. The figure also surpassed last season’s average, which stands at about 1.45 million.
CBS may have had higher hopes for Sunday’s telecast. CBS Sports’ telecast of the Kanas City Chiefs taking on the Las Vegas Raiders delivered an audience of 28.4 million, a number that CBS said represented the most-watched NFL game of the season and the best fourth-week telecast of an NFL game on any network. CBS News remains under intense pressure to demonstrate stability at the program, which was overhauled in chaotic fashion at the end of last season, despite mustering a notable 9% uptick in overall viewership.
Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor in chief, ousted Tanya Simon, an executive producer with years of history working at the show, in favor of Nick Bilton, a journalist and screenwriter with less formal TV experience. Also pushed out were correspondents Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. Anderson Cooper left of his own volition following the end of his contract.
Their replacements, which include Ross Douthat and contributors like Ariel Levy and Sebastian Junger, have top-shelf backgrounds, but also little experience working on a weekly TV program that emphsizes long-form enterprise journalism. While executives are working furiously to put their stamp on the venerable program, and to keep generating high-quality stories despite a disruption in the off-season production process, they are also grappling with the vicissitudes of live TV. CBS’ NFL telecast on Sunday went late, meaning that “60 Minutes” spent more of its time directly opposite NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” one of TV’s biggest audience generators.
Executive at Skydance, the company formed from the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, will want to see “60 Minutes” do more with its football audience. The show is supposed to act as a bridge between CBS’ football games and its Sunday-night primetime lineup, which this season includes “Marshals,” “Tracker” and “Cupertino.” Meanwhile, “CBS Evening News” saw its overall viewership for last week surge, with overall viewership for the program up 18% compared with the year-earlier period, to 4.2 million.
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