Who Is Matt Gutman? And Why Is He Anchoring CBS Evening News?

The “CBS Evening News” averaged 4.1 million viewers last week, its strongest performance in 17 weeks and the first time the program cleanly surpassed the 4 million-viewer mark since March.

The milestone came while regular anchor Tony Dokoupil was on a two-week summer vacation. 

Substitute anchor Matt Gutman delivered the numbers during his first week in the chair in late July, according to Nielsen ratings data obtained by Status. The 4 million threshold has long been viewed as a key benchmark for the embattled broadcast. 

Matt Gutman

The program, overhauled earlier this year under CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, has repeatedly fallen short of it under Dokoupil, who took over as sole anchor in January. Dokoupil last exceeded 4 million in the week of March 30 (averaging about 4.2 million) and briefly touched exactly 4 million in the week of June 22, but the show has otherwise struggled to clear the mark consistently. 

Gutman’s week represented a rare ratings victory for CBS’s third-place evening newscast, which continues to trail far behind ABC’s “World News Tonight” (typically 7–8 million viewers) and NBC’s “Nightly News” (typically around 6 million). The strong showing for the fill-in has been described as an “unexpected and somewhat awkward result” for the network. 

One veteran television executive called Dokoupil’s decision to take two weeks off “a baffling move given his collapsing show,” noting that the substitute “outclassed him in the ratings” and labeling the episode “another dagger.” 

Inside the CBS newsroom, some staff reportedly reacted positively to Gutman’s on-air presence, describing him as more “likeable” and “personable.” The program remains under pressure after months of soft ratings following the Weiss-era reboot, which replaced a dual-anchor format and aimed to refresh the newscast’s approach.