“I don’t think it’s bad to have the commander in chief be a regular viewer of the show,” the anchor said in an interview.
For all the vast changes in the American media landscape, one decades-old truism had remained: The traditional nightly newscasts on ABC, NBC and CBS are the most-watched television news programs on any given day of the week.
In the second Trump administration, that is no longer always the case.
Fox News’s evening newscast, “Special Report,” hosted by Bret Baier, beat “CBS Evening News” on Tuesday. And not by a little. The back half of Mr. Baier’s show, which airs from 6:30 to 7 Eastern time, was seen by 1.8 million more people than CBS’s 6:30 newscast, a 47 percent advantage.
It was the second time in recent weeks that Mr. Baier, a cable news anchor, had edged out his old-school competition. His Feb. 28 program, which featured an interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine hours after Mr. Zelensky’s fateful White House meeting with President Trump, also drew higher ratings than “CBS Evening News.”
The audience for each of the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly newscasts is still almost always bigger than it is for Fox News in the same time slot. But in 2025, Mr. Baier is nipping at their heels. He is beating the top-rated newscast, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” in close to a dozen regional markets, and his viewership has outstripped “NBC Nightly News” in some major East Coast metropolitan areas, according to Nielsen.
What’s behind the surge? One explanation is the profound shift in how Americans consume news and information, as trust in traditional media outlets has fallen to record lows. Another is the success of Fox News itself, whose plethora of pro-Trump opinion shows — including, as of last month, a program hosted by the president’s daughter-in-law — have enjoyed record ratings since Mr. Trump’s re-election.
CBS, which changed “Evening News” anchors in January after the exit of Norah O’Donnell, is also struggling with a new format that has failed to entice viewers. The show, which trailed ABC and NBC before the change, has fallen even further behind.