All signs point to the American Sign Museum for hosting Cincinnati's live CBS Evening News broadcast 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
“CBS Evening News will be broadcasting live from the American Sign Museum tomorrow [Thursday] at 6:30pm — and we couldn’t be more thrilled to share this moment of national recognition," the Cincinnati Preservation Association posted Wednesday about its partner organization.
Tony Dokoupil has been introducing himself to viewers as the new CBS Evening News anchor with live broadcasts during a two-week cross-country tour. He comes here Wednesday night from Chicago.
A hallmark of Dokoupil’s CBS Evening News reboot, under new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, has been a live interview, or an extended unedited conversation with a Trump administration official.
On Tuesday’s broadcast from Detroit, he devoted nearly half of the half-hour newscast (13 minutes) to an unedited exclusive interview with President Donald Trump inside a Ford truck plant. He also did an interview with General Motors CEO Mary Barra during the broadcast from GM headquarters. On Monday, he interviewed Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, from Denver’s Union Station.
His Cincinnati broadcast will feature a recorded interview with Tod Swormstedt, founder and curator of the Camp Washington museum, the Cincinnati Preservation Association says.
The 20-year CBS News veteran, and former CBS Mornings weekday cohost, announced that Cincinnati would be part of his 10-city “Live from America” tour on Dec. 22. The tour concludes Friday in Pittsburgh.
CBS News said that Dokoupil — who replaced the John Dickerson-Maurice DuBois team — would be “meeting people where they are — sharing the most urgent, important stories with Americans, rather than talking to them.” He will “offer a fuller picture of the country, a closer look at the neighbors they share it with and the challenges we face together.”
Dokoupli is the third anchor in less than a year for the network's signature newscast, and the first major personnel move by Weiss, a former political commentator with no television journalism experience hired last year by new owners Paramount Skydance.
Dokoupil’s tenure on CBS’ third-place evening newscast has gotten off to a rocky start, according to media reporters. His first broadcast on Saturday Jan. 3 — delivering breaking news after U.S. troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that morning — included a 15-minute exclusive live interview with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Dokoupil asked a lot of good questions, but he never got Hegseth to explain who was running Venezuela.
On Monday, Jan. 5, producers confused him by alternating pictures of Sen. Mark Kelly and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, rendering him unsure of which story to read. “First day, big problems,” he told viewers.
On Tuesday, Jan. 6, he marked the fifth anniversary of Trump supporters’ riot at the U.S. Capitol by saying: "President Trump today accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack on the Capitol while House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the president of 'whitewashing' it." He didn’t mention that the U.S. House investigation, Capitol police officers, special prosecutor Jack Smith, Congressional Democrats, even some Republicans, and many others blamed Trump for the violent attack on the day Congress was to certify 2020 election results.
However, Dokouplis was praised for asking tough questions on Wednesday, Jan. 7, of Trump border czar Tom Homan after Minnesota mother Renee Macklin Good was fatally shot by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officers. Unlike Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who immediately called Good a domestic terrorist, Homan refused to speculate on her death until the investigation was complete.
"I'm not going to make a judgment call on one video when there's a hundred videos out there. I wasn't on the scene. I'm not an officer that may have body cam video. It would be unprofessional to comment on what I think happened in that situation. Let the investigation play out and hold people accountable based on the investigation," he told Dokoupil.
Before his Trump interview in Detroit, Dokoupil boasted to viewers that “we ask him about everything.” But that wasn’t true. He did ask the president about the Good killing, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, unrest in Iran, the economy, easing environmental regulations for auto makers and his “political retribution” and “morality.”
But he didn’t ask about Trump shouting an obscenity and flipping his middle-finger at a Ford plant employee who shouted “pedophile protector” during his Ford plant tour, as reported by competitor ABC World News Tonight Tuesday.
WKRC-TV, Cincinnati’s CBS affiliate, will broadcast an interview with Dokoupil on Local 12 newscasts before the CBS Evening News. No public events have been announced for Dokoupil.
