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The MAGA-curious CBS News boss Bari Weiss is facing a new crisis as viewers are abandoning the network’s top morning programming.
CBS Mornings posted its smallest weekly viewership in the program’s history last week, according to Nielsen data obtained by Mediaite.
CBS Mornings averaged 1.59 million viewers during the week starting with July 13, marking the first time the show’s audience dipped below 1.6 million since tracking began, Mediaite reported.
The numbers marked a 13 percent drop from the same period last summer, when CBS Mornings averaged 1.83 million viewers from July 14 to July 18.
Weiss, 42, took the reins of CBS News in October after she was installed by Paramount Skydance’s Trump-friendly owner, nepo billionaire David Ellison, despite having never worked in television news before.
The anti-woke opinion journalist, who was brought in to make the network more appealing to conservative viewers, has steered the network into a more MAGA-friendly direction, but that strategy has not delivered a spike in viewership on key programs.
Fox News’ morning show Fox & Friends trails CBS Mornings, but it saw its audience grow four percent during the same period that CBS’s program dropped 13 percent, according to Mediaite.
Fox & Friends drew an average of 1.46 million viewers last week, putting it nine percent behind CBS Mornings. But that margin represents a major shift from a year ago, when CBS held a 30 percent advantage over Fox News in the 7 to 9 a.m. slot, the outlet reports.
CBS did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
CBS Mornings, which debuted in 2021, has been without a permanent co-host since Weiss made Tony Dokoupil the face of CBS Evening News, which has also been on a losing streak and trails ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and NBC’s Nightly News with Tom Llamas by millions of viewers per day.
Currently hosted by anchors Gayle King and Nate Burleson, reports said in March that Weiss was plotting to hire MAGA-loving ex-ESPN anchor Sage Steele for CBS Mornings.
Earlier this month, CBS Mornings sent political correspondent Ed O’Keefe to prop up President Donald Trump’s ailing state fair on the National Mall with a Ferris wheel ride. As the camera panned over the grounds below, the glaring lack of attendees went unmentioned.
The morning show’s ratings collapse comes as several headline-grabbing controversies have engulfed CBS under Weiss’s leadership, including the firing of several 60 Minutes correspondents and producers.
Weiss has also abandoned the network’s standards for news objectivity by celebrating Trump’s war with Iran, and she has repeatedly censored episodes of 60 Minutes that featured reporting the White House opposed.
