On Tuesday, shortly after Elon Musk’s extraordinary press avail in the Oval Office—the unfounded declarations about fraud and corruption; the bizarro appearance of his 4-year-old son, X Æ A-Xii (X for short); a bemused Trump looking on—the retired CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer sought to contextualize the gravity of the moment in a Facebook post. “In my years on the White House beat from Presidents Carter to Obama,” he wrote, “I never witnessed a scene like the disgusting display that occurred in the Oval Office today.” Whatever one made of Elon’s appearance, it was indisputably abnormal and historic. Fittingly, the images went viral on social media, and led practically all the major news sites on Tuesday afternoon. At 6:30 p.m., ABC’s David Muir began World News Tonight with “breaking news” of the “remarkable scene just a short time ago: Elon Musk holding court in the Oval Office.” Likewise, NBC’s Lester Holt led the Nightly News with Musk’s “major moment with President Trump in the Oval Office.” Notably, CBS took a different tack, delivered by Evening News co-host John Dickerson: “We begin tonight with a classic question that has come to symbolize a crisis in American education: Why can’t Johnny read?” The package was pegged to national test scores demonstrating that students remain at pre-pandemic reading levels despite hundreds of billions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funds. After the six-minute segment, Dickerson and his co-host Maurice DuBois offered a “roundup” of the day’s headlines, noting Russia’s release of an American prisoner (15 seconds) and Musk’s Oval appearance (22 seconds), before moving on to a two-minute conversation with CBS’s chief medical correspondent about Avian flu. “Why can’t Johnny read?” is a play on the 1955 best-selling book about flaws in U.S. education, of course. But within CBS’s Washington bureau, it has become fodder for a broader internal critique of Evening News—and, indeed, the network itself—under C.E.O. Wendy McMahon and Evening News supervising producer Bill Owens. “Why can’t John read the news?” one CBS News correspondent asked me, referring to Dickerson. “It’s tough to watch,” a former CBS News insider said. “I appreciate doing something new. I really do… [but] Bill and I have different theories of the case.” Since becoming CBS News C.E.O. in 2023, McMahon has entrusted the network’s editorial vision to Owens, which is understandable given his tenure at 60 Minutes, where he has served as executive producer since 2019. Last August, she expanded Owens’ remit to include Evening News, the perennial third-place nightly news broadcast. Owens immediately conceived of a new editorial strategy prioritizing longer enterprise packages, human interest stories, and ample weather coverage over the usual digest of the day’s big headlines. He also asked McMahon to delicately transfer Norah O’Donnell off the anchor’s desk in order to install Dickerson and DuBois, making Evening News the first nightly broadcast to do away with a single anchor, Cronkite nostalgia be damned. Perhaps none of these were great ideas, but they were at least an attempt to shake up a stale format whose decline mirrors the demise of linear television. While it’s obviously very early—the newly revamped Evening News only debuted in late January—the show has already seen its ratings markedly decline. In its second week, its total audience was down 5 percent from the prior week, and down 9 percent year over year. Meanwhile, the programming strategy has confounded many network insiders—“It’s just not good, sorry” one said—while irking several of the Washington-based correspondents, who fear the loss of what precious little real estate still exists for their work.

Ironically, the pivot to less headline-driven programming is occurring at a moment when real news is coming out of Washington at a record clip. On Wednesday morning, I’m told that Owens came down to the newsroom floor and made it clear to executive producer Guy Campanile and others that even he thought the broadcast had underplayed the Musk news. Was this ass-covering, an actual volte-face, or simply the latest sign that no one in charge really knows what to do anymore? “I think last night was the night many around here really got upset or confused by what they’re attempting to do,” one CBS News insider told me. In the grand scheme of things, Evening News certainly did need an overhaul, and it could afford to take the risk. And, given all the myriad ways people now get their news, you can understand the desire to create a product that offered something other than headlines that audiences are already familiar with by 6:30 p.m. If 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Mornings have proven successful with the newsmagazine format, the logic goes, then why not Evening News? The longer packages seemed designed for social media and YouTube, which is where the future of the format resides. Then again, Evening News remains a profitable enterprise watched by nearly 5 million people, and, as most media veterans see it, there’s a reason why that’s the case. Alas, Owens’ newsmagazine format “does not work at that time,” one longtime media exec said. “There’s a reason formats work where they work.” In any event, the frustrations over Evening News are compounding the larger problems at CBS News amid the recent 60 Minutes edit scandal, and the broader anxieties about the news division’s fate if and when (when, really) Paramount is sold to Skydance. As I noted last week, everyone at the network, including Wendy and Bill, opposes Shari Redstone’s plan to settle Trump’s nonsensical election interference lawsuit against the network and views it as a gross incursion on press freedom. At the same time, many in the newsroom are also frustrated with Owens for making the unforced error and leaving the network vulnerable in the first place. Of course, the great irony in all this is that while Trump bullies and intimidates CBS News, he is hardly likely to deprive his loyal supporter and donor Larry Ellison and his son David of the asset. Still, the 60 scandal and the aimlessness of Evening News have taken some of the shine off the Tiffany network, adding insult to injury for journalists struggling to come to terms with the real existential crisis—which, as I’ve noted before, is that CBS News is a fading division in a fading network within a fading company. If the ratings declines continue apace, the revenue hits to the bottom line will undo whatever cost savings the network sought to achieve in the most recent overhaul. The biggest bummer here, however, is slightly more nuanced. Television news is a historically risk-averse medium deeply in need of reinvention. Yes, Owens’ new format innovation seems like a dud, but one hopes that it won’t prevent others from trying things out, too. After all, we all know what fate will meet the status quo.