Legacy media outlets are desperately trying to convince viewers they still matter.
They’re getting a painful lesson on the new landscape.
And Megyn Kelly dropped one fact about the legacy media that left journalists seething.
CBS Evening News got a wake-up call it didn't want to hear on New Year's Day.
Incoming anchor Tony Dokoupil posted a video message admitting what everyone already knows: Americans don't trust legacy media anymore.
"A lot has changed since the first person sat in this chair," Dokoupil told viewers. "But for me, the biggest difference is people do not trust us like they used to. And it's not just us. It's all legacy media."
He promised viewers they'd "come first" over advertisers, politicians, and corporate interests as he tries to salvage CBS's sinking evening newscast.
But Megyn Kelly wasn't buying the sales pitch for one second.
Kelly declares CBS dead on arrival
Kelly responded to Dokoupil's message with a cold dose of reality.
"Nothing will happen at CBS," Kelly wrote on X. "Nothing. Legacy media is dead and evening news has been totally irrelevant for a long time. CBS has not had evening viewers in any competitive way in more than a decade. It's not reversible."
The numbers prove her right.
CBS Evening News averaged just 4.17 million viewers last season, down 10% from the previous year.¹
That put them in a distant third place behind NBC Nightly News and ABC's World News Tonight.
The ratings collapse got so bad that CBS dumped the two-anchor format they launched in January 2025 after watching viewership crater from 5.2 million on opening night to barely 4.5 million within three weeks.²
CBS is now bringing in Dokoupil as the sixth Evening News anchor in a decade, hoping he'll somehow reverse years of decline.
Good luck with that.
Kelly's show crushes legacy networks with tiny staff
Kelly knows exactly what she's talking about because she's living proof that legacy media is dying.
The Megyn Kelly Show destroyed CBS and NBC on YouTube in July 2024 despite operating with just six staff members.
Kelly's channel racked up 116.8 million views that month while CBS News managed only 83 million and NBC News pulled in 78 million.³
One woman with a skeleton crew beat two major network news divisions with hundreds of employees and massive budgets.
Kelly explained her success comes from something CBS abandoned years ago: telling viewers the truth.
"My core belief is that corporate media is dead, whether it knows it or not," Kelly told TIME Magazine in April 2025.⁴
She's built an empire by doing exactly what legacy media refuses to do — challenge the establishment and trust the audience's intelligence.
CBS Evening News is stuck competing for scraps while Kelly's show keeps growing.
The proof is in the pudding on legacy media's death
The 2024 election proved once and for all that legacy media is dead.
CBS, NBC, and ABC spent months attacking Donald Trump relentlessly during the campaign.
Every broadcast news anchor threw everything they had at Trump trying to stop him.
He won the biggest Republican Presidential victory since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
None of their punches landed because Americans stopped listening to them years ago.
The era of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather is over.
Baby Boomers grew up watching those men deliver the news each night.
Those anchors were trusted voices in American homes for decades.
Today's broadcast anchors are nobodies.
Nobody under 40 can name who sits behind the CBS Evening News desk.
Tony Dokoupil has zero name recognition outside media circles.
The monopoly the Left had on information by controlling newspapers and broadcast news has crumbled.
Three networks decided what Americans knew about current events from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Americans had nowhere else to turn when all three pushed the same liberal narrative.
Now anyone with a smartphone can bypass the gatekeepers and get news from sources they actually trust.
Someone like Megyn Kelly wields more influence than every CBS Evening News anchor combined.
Her show reaches millions more viewers than Dokoupil will ever see behind that anchor desk.
Kelly built that audience by doing what CBS refuses to do — tell the truth even when it makes Democrats uncomfortable.
CBS Evening News has experienced a 14% decline in viewership since 2019, and Face the Nation dropped 12% during the same period.⁵
The network keeps cycling through anchors hoping someone will magically fix structural problems that have nothing to do with who's sitting in the chair.
Now Dokoupil gets his shot at salvaging a sinking ship.
But Kelly's right — nothing will change at CBS because the problem isn't the anchor.
Americans stopped trusting legacy media because outlets like CBS spent years lying about Russia collusion, burying the Hunter Biden laptop story, and claiming COVID lockdowns were backed by "the science."
CBS thinks a new anchor will fix years of biased coverage and selective reporting.
Dokoupil can promise transparency until he's blue in the face.
The network still employs the same producers, editors, and executives who buried stories that hurt Democrats and hyped stories that helped them.
That's why viewers tuned out and found truth-tellers like Kelly who don't filter the news through a partisan lens.
¹ "NBC, ABC & CBS Evening News Ratings 2024-2025 TV Season Revealed," TV Insider, September 24, 2025.
² "CBS News Ratings Collapse After Norah O'Donnell Exit," TV Insider, February 24, 2025.
³ "Megyn Kelly tramples NBC, CBS News in July, draws over 30M YouTube views," BizPac Review, August 28, 2024.
⁴ "Megyn Kelly: 'Corporate Media Is Dead'," TIME, April 25, 2025.
⁵ "CBS News Faces Controversy and Ratings Decline: What's Next?" US Newsper, February 24, 2025.
