CBS News Ratings are Bari Low in June

It turns out that when you treat one of the most respected news organizations in television history like a personal playground, viewers tend to find the remote.

The latest disaster out of the Bari Weiss-led CBS News has hitting the fan, and this time, it’s the morning show taking the hit. According to internal Nielsen numbers making the rounds, CBS Mornings is pacing toward its worst June ever.

The bleeding accelerated sharply on June 3—the day after Weiss abruptly booted 60 Minutes titan Scott Pelley out the door. On the day of his firing, the morning show managed a decent 1.8 million total viewers. The very next morning? A measly 1.59 million.

That is an 11% drop in total viewers overnight. But the real gut-punch for the sales department is in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic, where the show cratered by a massive 28%—tumbling from 313,000 to 225,000 viewers.

Sources say the sudden drop has "alarmed" the suits at the network. It should. Morning news is where the networks make their real money, and right now, the money is vaporizing.

This isn't an isolated incident. Ever since billionaire David Ellison brought in Weiss—who had zero broadcast television experience—to run the shop, the network has been a non-stop circus of internal revolts and sinking ratings. Over at the CBS Evening News, Tony Dokoupil’s debut under the new regime saw the broadcast shed over a million viewers compared to last year.

Add in the recent mass purging of top-tier talent at 60 Minutes—including Tanya Simon, Sharyn Alfonsi, and Cecilia Vega—and the quiet exit of Anderson Cooper, and you have a news division completely hollowed out.

Longtime veterans are already whispering that Weiss’s days might be numbered if the Skydance-Paramount merger with Warner Bros. Discovery goes through. As one former 60 Minutes insider put it, everything being touched right now is turning to dust.

Stay tuned.