(Sipa via AP Photo)
cbs news boss Barry Weiss During an internal town hall meeting on Tuesday, she told staff they weren’t putting out enough content to engage Americans, while also sharing her strategies for attracting more viewers and readers.
CNN Brian Stelter Posting her comments on the
“We don’t make a product that enough people want,” Weiss said.
She continued, “We can blame it on demographics, technology, distraction, or ‘news avoidance’ — but these are all responses.”
Weiss said she was “shocked” by a number of reporters recently, including Matt Gutman’s Covering anti-ICE protests in Minnesota.
But she said CBS currently faces two main problems. The first is that not enough people “trust” the store or other mainstream stores. Polls back up her claims, with Gallup reporting that the American public’s trust in the news fell to an all-time low in 2025.
The second problem, Weiss said, is that CBS isn’t “doing enough to meet the needs” of viewers and readers.
She said that before her arrival, CBS’s strategy was to “capture” the dwindling broadcast audience. Weiss said that cannot be the case in the future, otherwise CBS News will be “killed.”
Weiss wants CBS News to immediately start focusing on how to better promote stories on YouTube and emphasize streaming. “We need to move to a streaming mentality immediately,” she said.
After a while she told her crew:
As we move forward, our primary competition is not for ratings but for audience share. Our competitors are not just other broadcast networks. We are competing for the attention of anyone in front of a screen.
Her streaming-focused game plan comes after CBS News finished third in the Nightly News Battle last year. Wes recently picked Tony Dokupil Be the first to transform CBS Evening News; His first week as anchor earlier this month failed to boost ratings, but his Jan. 19 broadcast drew 6.4 million viewers — the show’s best night of 2021.
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