In recent days, set designers at CBS News have mocked up a backdrop for Evening News that transforms the studio into a dimly lit, mahogany-lined bar, complete with high-backed stools and shelves crowded with crystal decanters and unlabeled whiskey bottles. On one wall, there’s a massive sign that reads, “Whiskey Fridays with Tony Dokoupil,” the show’s new anchor. On the adjacent wall, there’s a “Sponsored By” message above the iconic Victorian-era Jack Daniel’s medallion. This week, the tacky photos of the mock-up leaked to Prem Thakker, a reporter at Zeteo, who published them on X.

It’s not exactly clear what Bari Weiss & Co. are trying to manifest here, though it’s also not hard to imagine. A CBS News spokesperson told me that this was “an experimental mock-up” for a non-televised, in-person event, and Jack Daniel’s parentco Brown-Forman issued a statement saying they had no existing or planned sponsorship deals with CBS. Nevertheless, a well-placed CBS News source described it as “an audience engagement idea,” wherein Tony would “engage directly with viewers in person after the show on Fridays,” and also said that there might be some “interaction” with the branding during the show’s final block, suggesting there’s interest in having a corporate sponsor underwrite a portion of the broadcast.

Anyway, with all the drama engulfing CBS News in its early Bari era, and all the mockery of Dokoupil’s troubled debut, the photos invited predictable ridicule. The same staffers who reliably bemoan the delta between Cronkite’s broadcast (he signed off nearly half a century ago, guys!) and its more recent iterations (all stuck in third place) are unsurprisingly anxious. Such overt corporate sponsorship is, they say, a violation of the basic principles of journalism and undermines the brand’s integrity. “At this point, how about whiskey every day?” one network insider quipped.

Despite all the handwringing, the mock-up may prove prescient. The rest of the television industry migrated toward more sponsorship-driven models long ago, most notably in sports programming, like ESPN’s College GameDay Built by The Home Depot and Kia NBA Countdown. Morning shows like Today and Good Morning America feature sponsored segments with carefully curated product recommendations. And for a time, Starbucks was the official coffee of Morning Joe. In newer formats, news-adjacent podcasts and YouTube-based shows depend on corporate sponsors who pay to have the shows’ hosts attest to the benefits of a car or mattress in the first person.

Younger generations won’t remember this, but television news has its roots in this model, too. In the 1950s, Cronkite’s own See It Now was sponsored by the Alcoa aluminum company. At NBC, John Cameron Swayze hosted the Camel cigarettes–sponsored Camel News Caravan while lighting up on-air. Those relationships crumbled under the weight of editorial anxiety, regulatory force, and changing network economics. As television news matured, journalists grew uneasy with the idea that a single corporate benefactor might hold even implicit leverage over editorial judgment. At the same time, broadcasters evolved away from single underwriters and embraced a magazine-style advertising model with many sponsors, insulating them from the perception of sponsor pressure and formalizing the “church and state” separation between editorial and business.

That separation is sure to be stress-tested by new economic demands. As you may have heard, television news is in inexorable decline, and even a better crop of newsroom leaders would be hard-pressed to reverse the viewership drought driven by the migration away from linear television. In Dokoupil’s first week on the Evening News, viewership declined from 4.4 million on Monday to 3.9 million on Thursday. On average, the show was down 23 percent year over year. To date, advertisers have continued to pay higher prices to reach fewer viewers, but at some point, the broadcasters will need to provide greater incentives.

Is this such a bad thing? Historically, most news anchors have been impervious to advertiser influence—though I suppose a garish Jack Daniel’s sponsorship might preclude a segment on declining alcohol consumption rates in light of health concerns. In an ideal world, an anchor would exhibit the same deference toward corporate sponsors that Stephen Colbert does when he openly mocks his own.

Of course, in this world, Tony’s boss canceled Colbert’s show. And Tony’s already-demonstrated malleability under Bari when it comes to his coverage of the Trump administration doesn’t inspire barrels of confidence here. As you’ve also probably heard, his interview with the president this week didn’t feature much pushback.

Anyway, the Jack Daniel’s segment, or something like it, is starting to feel inevitable. Several years ago, when he was still the moderator of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd quietly suggested to me that the future of television news would rely on the sort of in-show sponsorship deals that were a feature of sports media. It seemed like anathema then—less so now. “Legacy media is simply catching up to the indie/digital space. Funny how the tail now wags the legacy media dog,” Chuck texted me this week. “And, ironically, everything old is new again.”