CBS's "60 Minutes" sees lowest season-opening audience in 25 years
The Sunday night premiere attracted about 7.9 million viewers, the smallest audience for the program since the early 2000s, after a strong NFL lead-in and recent editorial changes.
CBS reported that the season-opening episode of its newsmagazine "60 Minutes" drew roughly 7.94 million viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen data. The audience size marks the lowest for a season debut since the turn of the century, and the key 25-54 demographic fell to about 1.6 million, a drop of one-third from previous averages.
The episode followed a high-rating Sunday night NFL broadcast that attracted an estimated 18.4 million viewers, down about 22 percent from the prior year. Despite the strong lead-in, "60 Minutes" retained roughly ten million fewer viewers, a disparity noted by a television executive familiar with the figures.
The program’s recent editorial direction has shifted toward a more conservative tone after former CBS News president Jeff Fager’s successor, David Weiss, was reported to have reorganized the staff earlier this year. The latest installment featured former Trump administration official Ed Martin in a segment about a hidden-camera investigation into pardon-brokering.
A CBS spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.