CBS Plans ‘Evening News’ Overhaul: John Dickerson, Maurice DuBois, Weather and Close Ties to ’60 Minutes’

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CBS wants to get back in the battle for evening-news viewers with a new take on the format that looks very little like the evening news viewers have come to know.

The network plans to rebuild its long-running “CBS Evening News,” retooling anchors, format and segments in a bid to make the half-hour once led by Walter Cronkite more valuable for modern news viewers who don’t recognize the show as the cultural touchstone it was in the 1960s and 70s.

After the 2024 election, with current anchor Norah O’Donnell stepping away for a new senior correspondent role at CBS News, executives at the Paramount Global news operation will put the show under the aegis of Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” Working with a new on-air team that includes co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, chief weathercaster Lonnie Quinn and Washington-based “Face The Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan, Owens intends to create a new show that works to break news and offer more depth, rather than trying to run down dozens of items that surfaced earlier in the day in the space of less than 30 minutes. “We are removing the clutter,” says Owens, during an interview. “We are not going to be dealing with the things we think people might want to see, and we are going to be about real serious reporting.

We are getting back to our beats, listening to our reporters in the field about what they have, not worrying about the headlines online or in the newspapers.” Correspondents from “60 Minutes” will appear frequently to break news they have discovered or tease some of the work they are preparing for the Sunday newsmagazine, and the anchors will get more than 90 seconds or so to delve into an important story or.