Suddenly, “CBS Evening News” is back where executives at the news division behind the show hoped never to return.

Viewership for the program has once again dropped below 4 million, a critical demarcation point that previously spurred alarm at the Paramount Skydance news division. CBS News recently scrapped a version of “CBS Evening News” anchored by Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson after the program shed audience and fell below 4 million viewers on many weeknights.

The overall audience for the program for the five days ended March 13 stood at nearly 3.83 million, according to data from Nielsen, and at 468,000 among viewers between 25 and 54, the demographic most coveted by advertisers.

In contrast, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” long the leading program among the three broadcast-network evening news shows, won an average of nearly 8.48 million, according to Nielsen, along with 1.03 million in the demo. NBC’s “NBC Nightly News” captured an average of 6.51 million overall in the same period, and 946,000 in the demo.

CBS News “retitled” the Friday broadcast of “Evening News,” so its results are not included in the tabulations.

One reason Dokoupil was moved from a perch on “CBS Mornings” to become anchor of the show is because CBS News executives worried they were falling further behind ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “NBC Nightly News” with Dickerson and DuBois, who led a show that focused more heavily on enterprise stories and news features than it did on breaking headlines. Now those concerns are poised to rise anew.

Quarter to date as of March 12, “CBS Evening News” has shed 15% of its viewership in the critical 25-to-54 demo, the audience coveted by advertisers in news programming, over the year-earlier period. In comparison, NBC’s “NBC Nightly News” is up 8% in the demo, while ABC’s “World News Tonight” is off 4%.

When Norah O’Donnell ended her tenure at “CBS Evening News” in 2024, she left with an audience of nearly 5.4 million. Dokoupil’s first five days, from January 5 to January 9, won an average of nearly 4.17 million, according to data from Nielsen — and in a subsequent week, he even nabbed an audience of 4.6 million.

The slide in audience comes after CBS News took Dokoupil around the nation and into the Middle East just after the conflict erupted between Iran and the U.S. and Israel. Dokoupil was the only one of the so-called “Big Three” evening-news anchors to get so close to the battle.

Dokoupil has gained traction over the years during his time as a co-anchor on “CBS Mornings,” won the notice of both former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky and current CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss. He has demonstrated a proclivity for developing interesting features, and, more recently, for taking on author Ta-Nehisi Coates on whether his writing expressed antipathy for Israel.

CBS News executives ascribe some portion of the viewership results to changes tied to the recent shift to Daylight Savings Time, according to a person familiar with the matter. And they have been encouraged by results that show Dokoupil’s “Evening News” gaining viewers when compared to broadcasts of the show from earlier in the season. The show’s viewership is up 7% in viewers and up 10% among viewers between 25 and 54 when compared to the average viewership of the current season to date.

EXCLUSIVE: The leader of an international pro-life group is criticizing a bill being considered in the United Kingdom that would protect women from criminal liability for abortions up until birth.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, 40 Days for Life CEO Shawn Carney said British lawmakers are following efforts by Democrats in the U.S. in seeking to allow abortion in these instances, which he described as “absolutely absurd.”

“They haven’t really lobbied for this,” Carney said. “Typically, Europe is far more conservative on abortion than the United States. Most European countries regulate abortion to 12 weeks. England has 16. In some cases, they do late term, up to 24 weeks. But now they want abortion through all 40 weeks. And this just seems sort of out of nowhere.”

Carney said he fears this bill, if enacted into law, would “start an unfortunate trend throughout Europe.”

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The Crime and Policing Bill includes a provision, Clause 208, that would remove criminal penalties for women in England and Wales who end their own pregnancy at any stage. The bill is now in its final stages in the House of Lords and is expected to receive a vote as early as Wednesday. If the House of Lords approves the clause, the bill would return to the House of Commons for any final changes before receiving Royal Assent to become law.

Under the provision, a woman can no longer be investigated, arrested or prosecuted for ending her own pregnancy at any gestation, even though the current standard legal threshold for most abortions in England and Wales is 24 weeks.

While women who terminate their pregnancies would be exempt from criminal liability, doctors and others who assist in an abortion after 24 weeks without medical necessity can still face prosecution.

As lawmakers consider Clause 208, several amendments have been offered, including removing it entirely, modifying it to exclude late-term abortions and adding an in-person requirement for medical consultations to end so-called “pills-by-post” services.

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Carney argued that the latter two amendments should still be unacceptable, stating that the clause appears to represent “a desire to kill.”

“I think it’s insane,” he said. “I know what they’re trying to do, but you need to combat the laws by saying we’re not aborting children at 40 weeks. The left built an entire movement on being able to survive outside the womb with viability. Then, as science and medicine progressed, viability changed because we could do a lot for unborn children. So they said at first it was 24 weeks, and then it was 22 weeks. Some say it’s 20 weeks. Others say it’s still 22 weeks. Nobody’s ever said it was 40 weeks. They’ve all said, of course, you can survive outside the womb. This is just a desire to kill, it seems, at 40 weeks.”

“I understand the idea of trying to make a legal compromise,” he continued. “But the compromise would be that you people have lost your minds. You want to abort a child the day before he or she is born. And it’s not medically necessary. The baby’s completely viable … so that’s how I think that you have to defeat these bills.”

Carney also said that “people don’t want to celebrate abortion” and “certainly don’t want to brag about how they can have an abortion up to 40 weeks,” adding that opponents of the U.K. bill are “missing common sense responses” to efforts to allow any abortion up until birth.

He added that while most people are not “monsters” seeking abortions at 40 weeks, removing legal liability for women at that point could make abortion more socially acceptable.

“I think what it does is it takes a little bit of a stigma away from abortions at 8, 10, 12, 16 weeks, because typically what we’ve seen in the U.S. is when you have states that say, hey, you’re going to have an abortion through all 40 weeks, what they do is say, well, okay, I’m not that bad. My abortion is not that bad because it’s only at 10 weeks, it’s only at 12 weeks, it’s only at 16 weeks,” Carney said.

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“It’s not that you’re going to see a lot of abortions at 40 weeks. It’s the mentality that abortion is not a big deal. You can even do it the day before birth, and so it’s more acceptable to most people,” he continued.

“People aren’t monsters,” he added. “The monsters write these bills, which are typically very liberal White people who say, you know what, we need to be able to have an abortion the day before your birthday. And most people look around at a party and say that person’s clinically insane.”

The left “has just married themselves to this,” Carney said.

“They believe you need unfettered abortion at all times in order to be a free and just society,” Carney said. “But nobody’s actually really medically needing that whatsoever.”

Published on
17/03/2026 – 17:28 GMT+1

The European Commission informally kept the process of membership for Ukraine in an effort to keep talks going despite Budapest’s firm opposition to Kyiv joining the 27-member bloc.

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The technical progress under clusters necessary to complete steps in line with EU reforms has been blocked by Hungary for more than a year, meaning Ukraine has barely advanced in the process since it received candidate status. Still, the Commission said Tuesday it would continue technical talks even if informally.

The move is designed to keep momentum going but does not change the structural hurdles faced by Ukraine in the face of staunch opposition from Hungary.

“At a time when Europe is under pressure from both East and West, we cannot afford to lose time. And we are not,” European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said on Tuesday morning after a meeting in Brussels.

“Now all six clusters are informally open,” she added. “Now have a clear to-do list.”

Last year, in its annual enlargement process report, the Commission suggested Ukraine was ready to open the clusters of fundamentals but failed to get these talks going.

Now, the Commission says it will open all six clusters, albeit informally, covering internal reforms, budget and justice. Each cluster includes several chapters. In total, the EU accession negotiations are structured around 35 different policy chapters.

According to Kos, the informal approach will allow Ukraine to continue all necessary reforms to align with EU norms and standards despite the complex political landscape. The goal is to advance as many steps as possible to allow the formal approval once the veto is lifted, even if a date is not guaranteed.

“We should differentiate between the two pillars of the accession process,” Kos said. “One is the technical work, which we will do now. The rest is the decision-making process in the member states.”

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Taras Kachka said that even though “informal” this is a “de facto” position of all EU members.

“This step is a really revolutionary step in a very European way,” he said, adding that it comes in line with the “with the current reality” and shows the EU’s “creativity while maintaining the rules”.

Ukraine is pushing for the EU to commit to an entry date as soon as 2027 to join the bloc as part of its ongoing peace negotiations, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling membership an “essential” pillar of its future security guarantees package.

Still, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last month the EU cannot guarantee a date and member states, whose unanimous approval is required, have called for more realistic options.