60 minutes has reached a worrying new low point after the takeover of CBS by MAGA-friendly bosses, new audience figures have revealed.
Sunday’s show attracted just 5.64 million viewers, according to Nielsen data obtained by Variety..
The ratings mark one of the smallest audiences the former CBS News show has attracted in years, following a continuing downward trend for the program.
Of those viewers, only 558,000 were aged 25 to 54. That’s down from 767,000 two weeks earlier. At the depth of a season, the series hadn’t dipped below a million in this bracket since 2000.
Weiss sparked a revolt at CBS in December when she published a 60 Minutes report on CECOT hours before it aired. /Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Compared to the same week last year, the show lost 60 percent of its total audience. Among the key 25-54 demographic for advertisers, the decline was a worrying 81 percent.
The embarrassment didn’t stop at the raw totals. 60 minutes normally wins Sunday evening among non-sports programs broadcast on television. This week, it was beaten by two of CBS’ scripted dramas: Tracker And Marshals.
When the show dropped earlier this month, a source close to the ratings told The Daily Beast that the network prepared for a drop because Fox had the latest NFL game. Sunday’s episode was in the same boat. But the show exists in part to draw football fans into the rest of CBS’ Sunday programming, so a weak 60 minutes signals a problem for the network and its parent company, Paramount Skydance.
In June, Weiss fired several people from “60 Minutes,” including correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, as well as executive producer Tanya Simon. / The Washington Post / The Washington Post via Getty Im
The decline in popularity is becoming a habit for the program. The season premiere in September, the first under CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, 42, attracted an estimated 7.94 million viewers. It was the smallest opening game since at least the turn of the century, despite a solid NFL lead.
On October 10, the fourth episode of the season attracted 6.06 million viewers, setting a new milestone with the fourth lowest-rated episode since 2000.
Weiss joined CBS late last year. / Noam Galai / Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press
Weiss, a former opinion writer who later founded the “anti-woke” newspaper The Free Press, was named editor-in-chief of CBS News late last year. Weiss had never worked in television news before.
His rise came after Paramount Skydance, run by David Ellison, 43, son of billionaire Trump donor Larry Ellison, paid $150 million for The Free Press. The Financial Times reported in 2025 that she won over Ellison in part by adopting a pro-Israel stance.
In a guest essay for The New York Times in August, Paramount CEO Skydance insisted that he had no desire to make his newsrooms “bend” to his opinions, and asserted that this type of independence “has always fueled the greatness of ’60 Minutes’.”
But the essay was actually a pitch to sell his $111 billion bid to buy CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
Protesters from the group Neighbors Against Mergers staged a mock “preview” of the new season of 60 Minutes in front of the CBS Broadcast Center in New York in September. / Valerie Terranova / Getty Images for the neighbors again
When Weiss was settled, she took a dull ax to the 60 minutes team. Longtime executive producer Tanya Simon was sidelined in favor of Nick Bilton, a journalist and screenwriter with virtually no broadcast experience.
The network fired correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Scott Pelley expressed his concerns about the direction the series would take. Within hours he was out. Anderson Cooper, a 60 minutes correspondent for 20 years, worked.
In their place came conservative commentator Ross Douthat, as well as contributors like Ariel Levy and Sebastian Junger. Variety said the newcomers had an impressive resume but little experience on a long-running weekly investigative TV show.
Sunday’s episode investigated the Trump administration deporting people to countries they had no ties to, some of whom were then sent back to the places they fled to. This echoed Alfonsi’s reporting on CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison, which Weiss had shelved at the last minute, sparking an open war within the series.
The episode also featured Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and election-denying Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was sentenced to prison for interfering with election machines but pardoned by Polis in May after pressure from President Donald Trump. Peters is grilled on the show by Bill Whitaker, but he is unrepentant.
The Daily Beast has contacted CBS News for comment.
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