Geoffrey

In a world of Bari Weisses, be a Scott Pelley or a Sharyn Alfonsi.

I like the format of CNN Headlines Express. Nice to get more than just a handful of stories that are talked about for an hour. Obviously similar to CNN Headline News. Interesting how this is the only CNN news show that uses different graphics.

Definitely an improvement. The space below the bar has been there since the first few days of the launch. It looked like a mistake and I expected it to be fixed the next day. Now it's more similar to CNN's ticker, which doesn't touch the screen edges. I still think the bar wastes a lot of space. And I've never been a fan of the way the text is either aligned to the center or left, depending on whether the ugly promo box is there.

The Netflix scorebug is big... Lots of extra space. And then the pitcher/batter text is tiny.

I don't believe there's room at the CBS Broadcast Center for CNN (unless both organizations are hollowed out even more, of course).

Is it really a format that they're using or simply a branded title?

CBS 2 recently emailed members of the Weather Watchers network that they were moving to a new system, effective today. They had only been showing viewer reports in the morning and at noon but now: I noticed some different looking graphics this morning. One annoying thing is that the viewer comments are now in all capital letters, making them harder to read, much like the rest of CBS 2's graphics and full screens. Curious if there will be anything else new on air.

Tonight's dumbed down news, as reported by Tony and Bari:

This is the CBS Evening News thread.

I had a feeling this was the goal: Tony will be interviewing Donald Trump today. Surprise us, Tony.

Clearly it wasn't just the format Bari wanted to revamp -- it was the entire editorial tone of the news organization.

Weather does not seem to be a part of the new CBS Evening News, which makes sense. You don't need a regular weather segment on an 18-minute network evening newscast. Lonnie been doing the weather at 6 p.m. this week and hasn't mentioned Scott, who appears to traveling. I always thought it was weird to have someone else do the local 6 p.m. just because Lonnie had to do the Evening News at 6:30 (in the same studio, originally). Now with Lonnie not doing the Evening News, how can they justify having someone do just 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. (streaming/WLNY)?

This was in the 6:00 today. Lonnie made it a point to show that they can display the virtual floor temperatures in a larger size if they so desire. 20260108_181433.mp4

The anchor of the CBS Evening News actually said "Marco Rubio, we salute you!" at the end of the broadcast tonight. The "story" was an "Only In America" puff piece on the fact that Rubio has many titles in the Trump administration and made it seem like The Entire Internet is celebrating him with AI pics. Seems like something The Onion might have imagined CBS News pulling these days. Ridiculous.

I've always said that I love watching other people eat dinner during CBS Evening News commercials.

Looks like Fox is only using it briefly at the start of the hour? It seems weird to me. I understand the Olympic rings on NBC as that references their programming. I don't really anticipate other networks doing this. Maybe CBS will try to copy Fox.

Agree with most of your takes, and this one really bothered me. The shot always started with Tony centered, then quickly panned to the left as the OTS animated in. Seemingly half the time, the camera went too far and had to slowly come back to better frame. Is there any chance the "headlines" music was sped up? They definitely want this broadcast to be more energetic and lively (I still think Tony's talking speed picked up after he got flustered) but the music felt faster than I remembered.

Tony wasn't sure at one point which story was next and it seemed to take forever to get clarification. He drew attention to it. Ever since that moment, he's seemed very flustered, even two blocks later, still speaking very quickly, tripping over his words, and even getting Dr. Jon LaPook to speak pretty quickly. For the second block, they returned for Tony to read just one story, then tease the same story they had teased in the first tease. I get that they were planning on doing this broadcast from San Francisco until news dictated two days ago that they do news today but I was expecting a more polished product for the big debut. Edit: Bafflingly, they closed with a segment called "Only in America," a story read live by Tony, about something a small town did to raise money last winter. Last winter! And we thought the Evening News of 2025 was taking their time to report stories...

I like the old Dan Rather music (headlines and open). I like the camera shot. I don't love that Tony's picture appeared in the open and I don't like the bug and lower-third, especially the intentionally unaligned nature.

Photo from their social media posts... I had a feeling they might spin the desk around. Also, the logo on that desk is the old CBS News logo. I wonder if it's new or if it's from an earlier era. Almost looks temporary to me. I'm interested to see if they use any of the screens on the set on the other side of the cameras (they use this space for some streaming shows, right?).

I'm pretty sure that was a virtual set at KPIX designed from the outgoing look. I would imagine we'll see a different look tomorrow.

Dokoupil, anchoring the CBS Evening News two nights before his scheduled launch, is doing a long live interview with former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth. It feels like two frat bros hanging out, complete with Dokoupil gleefully repeating Hegseth's "Mauro effed around and found out" line. The interview was so long that it had two commercial breaks during it.

The logo, according to the Facebook profile picture this morning:

Bari Weiss has really made a mess of herself in short time. No one believes she did this for journalistic reasons. I agree with Scott Pelley, as reported by the NYT: Mr. Pelley said that if Ms. Weiss planned to be more involved with editing “60 Minutes” stories, she should attend the early screenings and communicate directly with correspondents. “She needs to take her job a little bit more seriously,” he said. I also agree with this comment via Threads: Remember when Bari Weiss was just an intellectually lazy columnist whom none of her colleagues at the New York Times respected?

Could be anything from using up remaining PTO, a previously scheduled early start to Christmas vacation for one or both of them, or the fact that Fridays tend to be lower rated (in general, I don't know anything specific about this broadcast) and they wanted their goodbye to be seen.