Tony Dokoupil’s fill-in Matt Gutman will get ‘CBS Evening News” best scores in months

“CBS Evening News” scored its best weekly viewers in months — as struggling anchor Tony Dokoupil was on trip.

The show averaged 4.1 million viewers for the week of July 27, according to Nielsen, marking the show’s best performance in 17 weeks and the first time the “Evening News” has topped the 4 million-viewer mark since late March.

The upbeat numbers got here as Matt Gutman crammed in for Dokoupil, who has wrestle to maintain the show’s scores above 4 million in current months,

Rating had been up for “CBS Evening News” during Tony Dokoupil’s trip. CBS by way of Getty Images

“It’s a bad sign for Tony when your substitute anchor reels in over 100,000 more viewers than you,” a CBS source said, happening to invest: “If this trend continues, [CBS News Editor-in-Chief] Bari Weiss will have to think about changing anchors.”

The source said that when Dokoupil returns to the chair, he’ll should hit the ground working and maintain viewership above 4 million — or else it’s a “clear indication” that the viewers prefers Gutman –“even if it’s a small sample.”

A CBS News insider said all network newscasts had more viewers the week of July 27 when in comparison with the week of July 20.

Aside from the gain of 100,000 viewers for Gutman, he also beat Doukoupil in the advertiser-coveted demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds. For the week of July 27, Gutman pulled in 570,000 viewers in the demo versus Dokoupil’s 516,000 whole, a week earlier.

What’s more, “CBS Evening News” has struggled to persistently hit over 4 million viewers since Weiss launched a major overhaul of the show earlier this yr, which included putting in Dokoupil.

While the anchor hit 4 million viewers during the week of June 22, he hasn’t exceeded that threshold since averaging 4.2 million viewers during the week of March 30, according to Status, which first reported the latest scores.

Matt Gutman reeled in 4.1 million viewers in the week he anchored. Getty Images

One CBS staffer chalked Gutman’s scores soar up to “the curse of Tony Dokoupil,” a saying inside the halls of the network that refers to a collection of misfortunes that have befallen the new anchor.

Dokoupil has had a truthful share of snafus since taking the helm on Jan. 5, beginning off with a teleprompter failure. More just lately, he anchored an ill-fated broadcast from Taiwan after the network failed to secure a visa to cover the US-China summit in Beijing in May.

During one of the broadcasts, the show’s cameraman suddenly collapsed from exhaustion, The Post first reported, giving rise to whispers that Dokoupil is “cursed.”  

Last month, the show mistakenly aired an picture of rapper Kanye West instead of Sean “Diddy” Combs in its report on President Trump mulling a pardon of Combs, as reported by The Post.

CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss put Dokoupil at the helm of the “Evening News” in January. Getty Images

Dokoupil’s unhealthy luck struck CBS’ July 4th particular, as properly. Dokoupil, who was co-anchoring the network’s three-hour special from the National Mall in Washington, DC, was among those evacuated attributable to incoming thunderstorms, placing a crimp in the network’s deliberate programming.

Sources at the time said the program appeared like “amateur hour” and famous that the primetime show seemed to be scrubbed from CBS’ streaming service Paramount+, the place it had been live-streamed, in addition to from CBS.com.

CBS News didn’t return requests for remark.

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