Bari Weiss’ overhaul of CBS News has been rocky. But her 60 Minutes revamp will be the ultimate test

Bari Weiss is 10 months into her tenure as editor-in-chief of CBS News, but her biggest test is right around the corner.

The newest season of 60 Minutes is set to premiere next month after Weiss overhauled the show’s correspondent corps and production staff in the spring. Long considered the gold standard in television news, the show still generates a staggering nine million average viewers per night at a time when linear television’s core audience is either aging out or turning to digital alternatives.

A drop in ratings for 60 Minutes would be devastating for both CBS and Weiss, and her track record at the network has raised concerns about whether her changes – which included ousting several top correspondents and producers – will be well-received by viewers.

Under Weiss, the network’s journalists have continued to break big stories about the Trump administration. But her first programming move, bringing in a new anchor for CBS Evening News, has not meaningfully increased the show’s audience, and the network’s morning show has also struggled mightily to attract viewers, recently hitting new weekly lows in viewership.

One of her new hires to the 60 Minutes lineup, British commentator Sir Trevor Phillips, laid out the high stakes in an eyebrow-raising interview this week with the Telegraph.

“Bari and her team have a huge tanker of a network news organization to turn around, and they are assembling a little team on the bridge,” he said. “The great thing about her is that she’s one of those people who will either change the world or crash and burn. But when they crash and burn, it’s in Technicolor.”

Weiss was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025 after Skydance Media, owned by David Ellison, son of billionaire Larry Ellison, acquired CBS parent company Paramount and then bought Weiss’s website, the Free Press, for a reported $150m.

CBS News has long trailed behind ABC and NBC in both its morning and evening newscasts, and while her some at the network may have hoped she could jolt the shows out of third place, that goal always seemed far-fetched.

That didn’t stop Weiss from attempting a shake-up. She tapped the well-coiffed Tony Dokoupil to lead a re-launch of CBS Evening News in January and was hands-on in the chaotic start to the show.

But the early returns on her changes have been modest. Over the first three months of 2026, the CBS Evening News was the only show to lose viewers (-7%) compared with the same period last year.

In July, CBS Evening News averaged 3.81 million total viewers per night, compared with 6.44 million viewers for the NBC Nightly News and 8.27 million viewers for ABC’s nightly news show, according to Nielsen data. It was the lowest-rated month yet for Dokoupil. And among viewers in the coveted 25 to 49 age demographic, CBS Evening News attracted just below 500,000 average viewers. Still, the network sees growth from last year, and the show has recently averaged over 4 million viewers on several nights.

Although CBS Mornings is seen as more under the purview of network president Tom Cibrowski, the show – now hosted by only two personalities, star anchor Gayle King and former NFL player Nate Burleson – has declined in viewership under Weiss. Last month, the show averaged 1.62 million total viewers, compared to 2.77 million for NBC and 2.79 million for ABC. Between 27 July and 31 July, CBS Mornings drew its smallest audience in the program’s history: 1.57 million average total viewers. (It hasn’t helped that the network no longer ends the day with Stephen Colbert, after his show was cancelled and replaced with a cheaper but less popular alternative.)

Ratings for 60 Minutes remained strong under Weiss, finishing its 58th season with an industry-leading 9.1 million average viewers per show. But soon after the latest season ended in May, Weiss completely upended the show, ousting star correspondents Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega along with executive producer Tanya Simon.

Amid the turmoil in the spring, the show’s other three full-time correspondents, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, agreed – with some obvious trepidation – to “stay and fight”.

Still, with roster spots to fill, her hand-picked executive producer Nick Bilton announced the hiring last week of New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat as a full-time correspondent, along with the addition of three new contributors: Sebastian Junger, an author and documentarian best known for writing the 1997 book The Perfect Storm; Gianna Toboni, a video journalist who spent 10 years at Vice News and gets high marks from her peers and future colleagues at CBS News; and Phillips, a British political commentator who is not well known in the United States.

“I think that they’re all talented people in their own right,” Steve Kroft, who retired in 2019 after 30 seasons as 60 Minutes correspondent, said in an interview with the Guardian. “I have trouble seeing how they’re going to be 60 Minutes correspondents, mainly because nobody really knows what the show’s going to look like.”

While Douthat’s lack of experience in television journalism, and clear partisan lean, made him an odd choice as a 60 Minutes correspondent to many media observers, some CBS News staffers were relieved that Weiss didn’t move further in the conservative direction. “At least he isn’t Nick Fuentes,” one staffer joked, referring to the white supremacist. “That shows both where we are mentally and where the bar is.”

The tumult at the network has led to questions about Weiss’ long-term future at CBS.

In May, the network offered a statement of support for Weiss after a report in industry publication Puck that her “mandate” at CBS might be changed “in ways that would give her less control over the linear product”.

“Bari has the full support of Paramount and David Ellison as the editorial leader overseeing CBS News and 60 Minutes,” a Paramount spokesperson said at the time.

According to Puck’s Dylan Byers, Ellison contacted him directly to push back on the story, telling him: “Bari is a singular talent, and she is the person we have empowered to run our newsroom. Any reports that suggest otherwise are false.”

But concerns about her performance have only increased amid speculation that she could be asked to oversee CNN if and when Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of parent company Warner Bros Discovery, currently held up by a multi-state lawsuit, goes through.

In June, the Guardian briefly spoke with Ellison as he arrived for a brunch in Washington DC ahead of a UFC fight that was to be held in front of the White House. (Paramount Skydance signed a massive deal to obtain the rights to broadcast UFC matches).

Ellison exchanged pleasantries with this reporter, who asked for his thoughts on “how Weiss is doing at CBS News” and whether he’s “happy” with her leadership.

Instead of discussing Weiss, Ellison turned and walked straight into the venue. But a member of his entourage said: “She’s doing really well, thanks for asking.”