CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil left Cincinnati with a unique souvenir: A neon CBS Evening News sign made by American Sign Museum craftsmen to commemorate his live broadcast from Cincinnati.
“I’m very touched. I love that sign,” Dokoupil told viewers during his half-hour broadcast from the Camp Washington museum.
Since taking over the CBS Evening News Jan. 3, Dokoupil has ended each newscast on a lighter note, which he introduces as “and now for the good stuff.” He found plenty of it in the museum, the location for his Queen City stop on his two-week “Live from America” tour. It ends Friday in Pittsburgh.
Viewers from coast to coast saw a rich sampling of the collection started by founder and curator Tod Swormstedt. Cameras panned signs for Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson’s, Schoenling Beer, Crosley Shelvador Appliances, Rohs Hardware, Kelly Springfield Tires and Frisch's Big Boy, to name a few.
“To me, it’s all about small business, the heart of America,” Swormstedt said.
Dokoupil – a Connecticut native who grew up in Miami, Florida., and wrote for Newsweek before going to NBC in 2013 – found the walk with Swormstedt among the bright lights very touching.
“I didn’t actually think it would feel emotional, but it is,” Dokoupil said.
Before “the good stuff” came the day’s news. Dokoupil and CBS correspondents reported on more Minneapolis confrontations between Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officers and protesters; President Donald Trump meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Carina Machado; the NCAA’s investigation into college basketball game fixing; snowstorms blanketing New England; and the International Space Station crew returning to Earth.
For his enterprise story, Dokoupol toured Over-the-Rhine streets with Tom Synan, the Newtown police chief and leader of the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition. They talked about the “historic reversal” in drug overdoses since 2023, from 111,000 a year to 69,000 as of last August. The segment included file CBS News footage from a drug OD in Middletown in 2017.
Before the newscast, Dokoupil told WKRC-TV anchor Kyle Inskeep he was surprised by Cincinnati’s beauty and its mountains.
“Not only the buildings, the way light falls, but the mountains, the slopes, the kind of valleys here. It’s a really, really quite beautiful place to live,” said the former CBS Mornings co-anchor who replaced the short-lived John Dickerson-Maurice DuBois team.
If Dokoupil received other gifts from his “Live from America” tour stops in Miami, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Chicago and other cities, he didn’t make a big deal of it on the newscast like he did Thursday. The neon CBS Evening News sign glowed over his right shoulder in the show’s open and close.
“I’m Tony Dokoupil live in Cincinnati, and that sign is coming home with us to New York one way or another,” he told viewers while signing off. “But not before one final stop tomorrow in Pittsburgh.”
