Jbelkin
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“60 Minutes” saw an overall ratings decline of 21% from its last season premiere. Even more troubling for CBS, ratings were down 33% in the key demographic of 25- to 54-year olds—viewers most sought after by advertisers.
The premiere had a total estimated viewership of around 7.94 million viewers, despite a lead-in audience of more than 18 million viewers from the NFL broadcast that preceded.
The decline in the ratings was so severe that even the right-wing New York Post—which is owned by Rupert Murdoch—took notice of the weak performance, noting that “60 Minutes” ratings have not been this low since 2000.
Last year, the show had more than 9 million viewers—but that was before Weiss hired figures like conservative pundit Ross Douthat and purged a host of CBS News stalwarts.
The show’s poor performance echoes the ratings failure at “CBS Evening News” on the same network. That program, hosted by anchor Tony Dokoupil, had near-record lows in viewership after airing features like a “salute” to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile, Weiss has dumped figures like Scott Pelley, who revealed that reporters, producers, and others involved in the newsmaking process have been pressured by Weiss and other management to produce content that’s more favorable to President Donald Trump and the GOP.
The ratings debacle can ultimately be traced to CBS owner David Ellison, who took control when the Trump administration allowed his company Skydance to buy Paramount, CBS’ parent company.
Ellis, GOP donor and Trump ally, installed Weiss and oversaw the right-wing drift. Ellison is now trying to get approval to merge CBS with Warner Bros., which owns CNN.
If he’s allowed to proceed, the weak ratings for CBS may soon be coming to CNN too. But at least Trump will enjoy the programming.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/9/15/800098709/media/60-minutes-premiere-crashes-and-burns-under-bari-weiss/
ThingsThatDontJustifyGenocide
Oh no, the friend of nazi magazine-creator is bad at doing media and wants to produce pro-fascist media?
No one could have predicted this from her aligning with nazi magazine creators!
HonestCommentFarmer
Bari Weiss: Mission Accomplished.
TerranIV
This is exactly the desired outcome.
unluckyandbored
She's doing what she was hired to do.
elecvette
No explanation needed. Act like a dick. Get treated like a dick. No one likes you Murdock. Bout time for your wallet to reflect that. You Trumpladite fuck. Your on 5he wrong side of history.
SwampApe75
derpman4k
Actually, not really, well, sort of
Nfl viewership on CBS is down since the rights are now shared with Fox, viewership from NFL was down 22%
Its common knowledge 60 minutes gets a big ratings boost just by tvs being left on after football
https://nypost.com/2026/09/15/media/60-minutes-has-its-worst-ratings-in-more-than-25-years-after-staff-shakeup/
Its still down, by a margin, but there is some other reason for it. The article also mentions Neilson ratings measure different now as well
battery1979
That's what happens when you alienate your target audience.
amiurume
Task failed successfully.
Apolarbear65
It doesn't matter what the viewership is she was put there to torpedo it and ant failure is a success for them.
Camelspotting
I wonder if the shareholders can sue for lost profits. Use their own bullshit against them.
UnrealEstates
When a proper government get back in control for you poor bastards, I hope they reset the ownership of networks etc. to pre trump years. NO compensation, no benefits for the talking heads. "You are fired, your company is broken up, fuck off."
cheeriossuckbecause7
'May soon be'? Cnn has bent the knee to the centrist liberals for years. It's no better than any other mediocre quasi-rightwing news source, now. It doesn't have far too fall.
gonzar09
Who would've thought that turning anything into a right-wing propaganda circle-jerk would lead to a ratings decline?
But in all seriousness, I really hope that this leads to more proper news reporting and wasn't the intended mission.
Grimlinnan
CBS is just another fox propaganda shithole.
PoliticalWanderer
Which, ironically, means she's succeeding brilliantly at what she was actually meant to do. Drive the program and CBS news in general into the ground, keep the public ignorant, keep the powerful unaccountable, and keep journalism in a death spiral under the control of billionaires and the right wing.
eddbrowne
I will boycott advertisers on CBS VIEWS.
cytherians
Scott Pelley said something rather interesting. Bari Weiss comes from static news work. Not broadcast. And he posited that some of her missteps were due to this "incompatibility." But in fact, it may just be a smokescreen. When 60 Minutes fails, it won't be a black mark on her resume. Her scapegoat? "They pushed for me to do something completely out of my element." When in fact, it was intentional. And she operated with that in mind. Deliberate sabotage.
urusername2
More and more MAGAs are realizing they've made terrible choices!
lightfoot2
Gee I wonder why.
RHodeidra
Only 21 % ? That's shameful.
derpman4k
As i say in my own comment
https://nypost.com/2026/09/15/media/60-minutes-has-its-worst-ratings-in-more-than-25-years-after-staff-shakeup/
Nfl was down 22% on cbs... Goes to show 60 minutes ratings are inflated by people leaving their tv on after the big game
Without nfl i wonder how bad the ratings would be. More curious about their social media engagement and the like
EroticZombiePants
The thing about openly stating you want to make your news alt-right is that you are going to lose the moderates as well.
BarryTheCyborg
The people who work for her need to band together and throw her off the roof.
00110001001110010011100000110100
"We're so sorry but a forklift hit 40 out of 60 minutes."
SJBSavageInk
I saw it when they were struggling to say nice things about him during the election. And I was like... Oh I guess cbs isn't a good source of news anymore.
SecondSince
Honestly it is kinda impressive how quickly everything US is being demolished.
Sludgesoda
Don't be fooled though, this is a win for the Trump suckers. Deliberately wrecking things then pointing to the ruination they caused as evidence that it needs to be shut down was old hat back in the days or Regan.
meme2zombie
It's part of why fighting them is so hard. They have multiple win conditions and destruction is harder than construction.
mithiwithi
In this case, they don't even need the "point to the ruination as evidence" stage. Destroying independent journalism was an end in itself.
StarscreamAndHutch
Never liked 60 minutes. That stop watch was a countdown to the end of the weekend when I was a kid.
Lakesrid
Anyone mind giving a summary of what type of show "60 Minutes" is? I already feel lucky I have never heard of it but I am willing to ruin my day. Also, for all the text there could have been a sentence saying some shit like "the whatever type of show that this is has performed bla bla bla..."
danimals847
Once upon a time it was a well-respected one hour news segment (hence the name) where they would do a fairly deep dive into current events.
Lakesrid
Thank you <3
raitchison
She was brought in to kill 60 minutes and CBS news as a whole. Either by destroying it outright or turning it into a right wing propaganda machine ala Fox News.
nclu
The more plausible scenario is that the oligarchs in charge really think they are geniuses and that she'd do great (based on she could flatter them at a dinner party) than that they secretly want to tank everything.
PinkyTheUnicorn2
It's Starve The Beast applied to media. Truly fucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Arcygenical
My father who ran the network here in my country 30 years ago would be rolling in his grave at the direction the network has gone - and it was never particularly great to begin with.
jackal696
Yes you guys need more right wing news says everyone outside of usa
cytherians
Exactly.
An interesting confession from Scott Pelley in his observations of Bari Weiss. He didn't demean her. He actually applauded her on some counts. But her glaring lack of experience and an overt disrespect for the 60 Minutes staff was intolerable to him.
But what may look like tragic missteps may very well be intentional. Stahl and Whittaker are still on board, doing shows... but for how much longer? I wonder what will break their resolve.
LanceSackless
The question is, what does bari think? Does she think she’s hot shit or a fraud? Been plenty of previous evidence that seems to suggest she thinks she has talent
Toqom
Talent to follow what her owners want and that is to destroy liberal media. She's corrupt, nothing more
SamAndJanetEvening
She is very talented and doing exactly what she was hired to do. She'll think she's hot shit until her overlords are done with her and kick her into the gulag with the rest of us.
LanceSackless
I dont believe shes competent at all tho. Would be better to just tell her to try hard than to tell her to try to make it fail. Shes so bad she might accidentally come up with some good shit ‘Producers’ style
ScottPaul57
Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, and Walter Cronkite are all spinning in their graves.......
tidepool
And Barbara Walters is just like, I tried to tell all of you Trump as president was going to be a terrible idea and now look what’s happened.
wejustdontknow
Barbara Walters was lifelong friends with Roy Cohn, the mentor to Drumpth and just an evil man. I'm not so sure.
whoatherebigfella
Currahee63
So is Andy Rooney
Subwayfootlong3
His eyebrows still haven't stopped growing