For broadcast networks, the evening news broadcast is a cherished part of their legacies — having brought the likes of Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings into living rooms over the decades.

But with pressures mounting on the traditional TV business, the American institution is in a period of flux.

The traditional TV audience is a slow melting glacier, with network evening newscasts down nearly 1 million viewers in the 2024-25 season compared to the previous year, according to Nielsen. As a result, network news executives will be on edge this year, with two of the three broadcasts undergoing major overhauls.

Next month, NBC will replace longtime “Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt with Tom Llamas, 45, who helms the streaming NBC News Now program “Top Story.” It will mark only the fourth change in the “Nightly” role since 1983.

This comes after “CBS Evening News” in January replaced Norah O’Donnell with a duo of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois. Conceived by outgoing “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens, the new “CBS Evening News” has aimed to do longer segments instead of the headline-driven style the broadcasts are known for.

Although broadcast networks have largely ceded scripted TV shows to streaming, they are still protective of the news programs. Both NBC and CBS are trying to improve their competitive position against “ABC World News With David Muir,” which has its largest lead over the second-place peacock network in 30 years.

Like other TV newscasts, evening programs are in a battle to maintain relevance amid competition from not only cable and streaming but also YouTube, which attracts older audiences as well as younger, digital-savvy viewers.

“No one wants a tombstone that reads ‘Here lies the guy who killed the evening news,’” said Jonathan Wald, a veteran producer who worked with Brokaw on “NBC Nightly News.”

Evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC — all of which launched in the late 1940s — are among the few shows that still drive appointment viewing.

They’ve held up better than most TV network genres. Nielsen data show the programs are watched by an average of 18 million viewers a night and reach 71 million each month despite competition from 24-hour cable news and a barrage of platforms available digitally.

There are many weeks throughout the year when Muir’s broadcast is the most watched program in all of TV, often averaging 8 million viewers.

So far, the audience isn’t buying the changes on “CBS Evening News.” The program has dropped below 4 million viewers in some weeks since its launch and occasionally gets topped by “Special Report With Bret Baier” on Fox News.

Tom Llamas in 2023. (Nathan Congleton/NBC/TNS)

NBC News executives believe Llamas can provide a fresh spark for “Nightly News.” They’re encouraged that he led in the 25-to-54 age group on recent nights when he filled in for Holt.

“We think he’s exactly the right guy at this moment,” said Janelle Rodriguez, executive vice president of programming for NBC News. “He is someone who has worked at this literally since he was a kid.”

But there is always risk involved when an anchor change occurs — programs typically see a shift of 500,000 viewers in the aftermath. A single audience share point decline in the Nielsen ratings can mean about $10 million less in ad revenue.

Evening news broadcasts are still profitable businesses and have benefited from increased advertiser demand for audiences watching live TV. In 2024, ad spending on the three network evening newscasts, including the weekend editions, hit $669 million, according to measurement firm iSpot.tv, an increase of 12% over the previous year.

The programs also still provide an identity for ABC, CBS and NBC. A recent study by research firm Magid found that 50% of consumers cite news as their top reason for watching a network TV affiliate.

Most of the people tuning in at 6:30 p.m. to watch are older viewers who likely grew up with the habit, as evidenced by the commercial breaks. The data from iSpot show around 46% of the ad dollars spent on the programs are for pharmaceutical products.

Competitors have long taken shots at “World News,” calling it a shallow broadcast that delivers a lot of of stories without much detail. ABC News executives counter that Muir has traveled around the world to do lengthier reports that are expanded into documentaries for Hulu.

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“We spend a lot of time making sure the show is informative visually and reflects a modern, elegant broadcast,” said Chris Dinan, Muir’s executive producer. “David knows television. He’s a student of it.”

Viewers, who like Muir and the visual sizzle of “World News,” have made it No. 1 for nine consecutive years.

“You can’t listen to the chattering classes,” said Wald. “The show is watchable and consistent. You know what you’re going to get.”

Muir’s success has been rewarded. After sharing special coverage anchor duties with George Stephanopoulos, he is now the dominant face of ABC News. Muir’s former longtime executive producer, Almin Karamehmedovic, became president of the division last year.

For most of his tenure, Muir has maintained a neutral image that protected him from right-wing claims of bias made against many mainstream journalists.

That changed last fall as Muir and colleague Linsey Davis became targets after they vigorously fact-checked President Trump at the second presidential debate in September. “I’m not fans of those guys anymore,” Trump said during a Fox News appearance. “And his hair was better five years ago.”

Trump’s anger at Muir has had no impact on the ratings for “World News,” which have remained steady. Nielsen data show the program’s audience is down only 1% in the 2024-25 TV season compared to a year ago, while “NBC Nightly News” is off 6% and “CBS Evening News” is down 8%.

While Holt’s departure from “Nightly News” was presented as his decision, NBC News is historically unsentimental when it comes to making talent transitions, always looking for the next generation.

Llamas, 45, has spent three years at the helm of “Top Story” on NBC News Now, the network’s 24-hour streaming news service that draws a younger audience than the broadcast network.

Like Muir, Llamas has been immersed in TV news since he was a teenager.

Muir worked in a local Syracuse TV newsroom where staffers tracked his growth spurt with pencil marks on a wall. A 15-year-old Llamas landed an internship at a Miami TV station with the help of Jorge Ramos, the longtime Univision anchor. (Ramos’ children were patients of Llamas’ father, who has a dental practice in Miami.)

Llamas interned at “NBC Nightly News” and went on to jobs at MSNBC and as a local anchor at NBC’s Miami and New York stations. He moved to ABC News in 2014, where he was anchor of the weekend newscast and often filled in for Muir. He returned to NBC in 2021, leading to immediate speculation that he was being developed as Holt’s heir apparent.

“He’ll be a great steward for what ‘Nightly’ is now and maybe even extend its lifespan by injecting some youth,” said Wald.

The question at CBS News — which has been distracted by a lawsuit filed by Trump against “60 Minutes” and the pending sale of parent company Paramount Global to Skydance Media — is whether it will make tweaks to its evening news format before viewers start sampling again after Holt departs.

CBS News declined to provide an executive to speak on the record about the newscast. But two people close to the show said management continues to support the alternative approach to the broadcast and there are no imminent changes.

People who work on “CBS Evening News” but were not authorized to comment publicly said the program has already moved to shorter pieces. The producers are also expected to get some notes from Tom Cibrowski, the new CBS News president who comes from ABC News, where there is an emphasis on being viewer-friendly.

But the challenges faced by CBS demonstrate how hard it is to make changes to evening news when continuity and familiarity matter to the audience.

Muir was a longtime weekend anchor and then primary substitute for Diane Sawyer during her five-year run on “World News.” Holt was a fill-in for Brian Williams before his abrupt departure in 2015.

CBS has likely been hurt by changing evening news anchors six times since Dan Rather ended his 20-year run at the desk in 2005. The program has long suffered from a weak audience lead-in from its local stations, a problem that goes back to the mid-1990s, when a number of its affiliates switched to Fox after CBS lost its NFL package.

But broadcast networks are aware that the downward trend in appointment viewing on traditional TV is never going to reverse. It’s why the networks have expanded their evening news programs online.

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Llamas will continue to do “Top Story” on NBC News Now after he takes over for Holt in June. Dickerson has done an additional half-hour, which includes a longer newsmaker interview and a brief commentary at the end, on “CBS Evening News Plus,” which is shown on CBS News Streaming after the network broadcast.

All of the evening newscasts stream full episodes on YouTube, each attracting several hundred thousand viewers a night, as well as getting repeat airings on the 24-hour streaming news channels. “NBC Nightly News” clips reached 43 million on TikTok in the first quarter of 2025.

“As people move across different distribution points, we need to be ready for them,” Rodriguez said.

Of all the constellations we see through the year, Virgo the Virgin is the second-largest. The only problem is that it’s also one of the faintest. With a lot of visual digging, Virgo can be found in the low southeast evening sky this time of year. Virgo does possess one bright star, though. It’s Spica, easy to see because it’s by far the brightest star in the low southeast. Even if you have to put up with light pollution you’ll have no trouble spotting Spica.

Virgo is also one of only three constellations that portray a woman. The other two are Andromeda the Princess, seen in the autumn and winter, and Cassiopeia the Queen, seen all year round in the northern sky. Cassiopeia is a really bright constellation that looks like a “W.” This time of year, Cassiopeia is barely above the northern horizon in the early evening. It’s easily seen, since its stars are as bright as the stars that make up the Big Dipper. By the way, that “W” allegedly outlines the throne that Queen Cassiopeia is tied into, because she boasted that she was more beautiful than all the hundreds of Nereids, the daughters of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Poseidon had a tantrum, forced her onto her throne, bound her to it, and tossed her into the sky. He taunted Cassiopeia, telling her that she could now show off her “beauty” to everyone on Earth. It’s never a good idea to tick off the Greek gods!

Admittedly, Virgo is not a constellation for beginners. It’s a real challenge, although this week you have a better chance of spotting it because there’s hardly any moonlight in the early evening sky. Even after you’ve found Virgo, it’s beyond imagination how that oddball-shaped constellation is supposed to be a lady lying on her side holding a shaft of wheat!

The place to start your Virgo challenge is to find Spica, Virgo’s only bright star. That’s an easy task. Start out by looking in the very high northeastern sky for the upside-down Big Dipper. Follow the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle beyond the handle and you’ll run right into the bright orange star Arcturus in the high southeast heavens. Arcturus is the brightest star in the constellation Bootes the Herdsman, and also the brightest star in the night sky right now. Continue the arc beyond Arcturus, and the next-brightest star you’ll run into will be Spica in the southern sky, which more or less marks the left hand of Virgo the Virgin. The name Spica is a Latin name that roughly translates to English as “ear of grain.” The funny thing is that most interpretations of Virgo have the virgin holding the ear in her right hand….Go figure. Spica is actually a double star system around 250 light-years, or a little over 1,400 trillion miles, away from Earth. Both stars are much larger than our sun and kick out much more light. Both have surface temperatures well over 40,000 degrees. Our sun is only about 10,000 degrees.

(Mike Lynch)

Suppose you’re lucky enough to have access to a larger telescope, and you’re really out in the boonies. In that case, you can see at least a few of the many galaxies that make up the Virgo cluster of galaxies, about 60 million light-years from Earth. As you can see in the diagram, these galaxies are a little to the right of the main constellation. Since Virgo is so faint, it’s easiest to use the star Spica as a bearing. The Virgo cluster will be 20 degrees, or about two fist-widths at arm’s length, to Spica’s upper right. To be entirely above board with you, you’ll probably be much less than overwhelmed with how these galaxies appear in your scope, even if you have a larger one. At best, they will be mainly fuzzy patches, but those fuzzy patches are entire stellar islands, some of which are made up of one of billions and billions of stars.

In Greek mythology, Virgo the Virgin is the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and fertility of the earth. In many ancient cultures, the first sighting of Spica in Virgo was a cue to start their spring planting. When Spica and Virgo leave the evening sky in late summer, the growing season is ending. According to the story, when Virgo leaves the living land, she sets out on her annual search in the underworld for her slain husband Tammuz. At last report, she hasn’t found him yet, but she resumes her search after every growing season. The grand lady of the night sky doesn’t give up easily!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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Wish more politicians would follow the governor’s lead

Regarding Joe Soucheray’s Sunday May 11 column on Gov. Walz’s 2025 budget, in which Walz proposed to end some taxpayer subsidies to religious schools: Soucheray’s main argument is twofold: this has been a practice for 50 years and why would anybody oppose paying for religious students’ transportation costs.

I suggest Soucheray go back to the Minnesota State Constitution that has been the law of the land since 1857: “Article 111 Sec. 2. Prohibition as to aiding sectarian school. In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.” That predates the 50-year liberalization of laws by legislators and the courts who used twisted logic rather than straightforward garage logic of transferring public tax dollars to religious schools.

Even longer before that, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of (religious) opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.”

I, for one, find comfort in the governor’s ability to take on an unneeded government benefit. I wish more politicians would have the nerve to follow the governor’s lead and eliminate more taxpayer subsidies to religious institutions.

Steve Petersen, Shoreview

 

A pittance compared with all the over-spending

Once again Joe Soucheray has come out swinging and has hit the target right on. I do hope our governor reads his columns — he could really learn something.

I might not be the smartest person in the room but I do have common sense. Does Gov. Walz really think this pittance that goes to non-public education would make up for all the over-spending that has been done? If many of the students attending non-public education are not able to continue in their schools because of tuition increases they could be forced to attend public schools, increasing enrollment and stretching class size and over worked teachers.

I worked in special education for the Saint Paul schools and my children all attended Catholic schools K-12 (and actually college as well). I remember during their years at Nativity, our children were asked to clean up the fields at Groveland because they used them for baseball and soccer games. What? Did they forget that their parents were paying property taxes in the city?

I think we should try to get Joe Soucheray to run for governor, mayor just about any office just to get someone that has a brain.

Joan Barrett, St. Paul

 

Cheers for the Frost

Cheers to the Minnesota Frost, our Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) team, for never giving up. The PWHL is composed of the best female players in the world. The PWHL is about more than hockey. It is a movement empowering female athletes and society in general.

With three games remaining in the regular season they lost to the last-place New York Sirens at home. To qualify for the playoffs they would have to win their two remaining road games in regulation. They did. This gave them the chance to defend the Walter Cup, which they won in the PWHL inaugural season. Last season they also demonstrated a no-quit posture with comeback wins in the playoffs .The Walter Cup is given to the best team of the playoffs.

The Frost lost the first game of this year’s playoffs to the Toronto Sceptres. They rebounded and won the next three games, the last in overtime, to advance to the finals. They are three wins away from becoming Walter Cup champions again.

The Minnesota Wild this year in three home games in the first round of the National Hockey League playoffs sold out all three. Let’s show the same support when the Frost play at home at the Xcel Energy Center in the finals. Let’s sell out the arena. Let’s show civic and Minnesota pride. Let’s support these world-class athletes.

Never giving up, being resilient, passion, skill, hard work, teamwork, etc., are lessons in life our Minnesota Frost have displayed.

Gordon Hayes, Eagan

 

Take a more positive and objective view

This was a well written, heartfelt letter, very revealing regarding what Minnesotans are reading and comprehending.

The author begins, “I have never seen headlines and articles in the Pioneer Press or anywhere else like I’ve seen in the last week.”

He then goes on to list the headlines of the previous week, which were all Trump hit pieces.

His closing paragraph suggests he believes those hit pieces, and has not, or does not, read a broader range of information sources.

I too have been dismayed at the headlines over the past month, but have been questioning the lack of objectivity in current Pioneer Press reporting and editorials.

I close by challenging the writer to broaden his sources of information, while taking a more positive and objective view of America’s future.

Joe Remley, Hugo

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The controversial appointment of oncologist Vinay Prasad — an outspoken critic of the pharmaceutical industry and U.S. health agencies — to a key role within the Food and Drug Administration was a shock for drug companies. Biotech stocks immediately fell over fears that the bar for drug approvals suddenly got a lot higher.

Tightening regulatory standards is a reasonable goal. But achieving it requires delicately balancing evidence and compassion, weighing certainty against speed. Prasad has had a lot to say over the years about how companies and the FDA have gotten that balance wrong. Now, as the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees vaccines, gene therapies and the blood supply, he has to prove that he can get it right.

Some of his more rigid and contrarian stances, such as his views on COVID vaccines, do not inspire confidence. Prior to his appointment, Prasad served as a professor at the University of California San Francisco. He gained notoriety during the pandemic with his near-constant haranguing of the Biden administration’s decisions. He was particularly incensed by recommendations to mask and vaccinate children, views that neatly align with those of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.

But before that, he was known for his criticism of the lack of rigor in oncology drug data. He’s been a social media gadfly, calling out what he sees as subpar studies and a low bar for approvals. He’s argued against faster approvals for cancer drugs based on measures like a tumor shrinking or the disease not worsening, which Prasad and others have shown don’t always translate into people living longer. When taking down a medical finding, one of his favorite responses is, “Randomize or STFU.”

That message, though acerbic, isn’t wholly controversial. He thinks the public deserves drugs that are safe and effective and the decisions around approvals should be free from conflicts. And many experts, including former regulators, bioethicists and health policy experts, agree with his belief that too many drugs are making it onto the market before being proven to have real value.

I’ve also criticized the FDA for leaning too far into speed over certainty: Approving drugs on scant evidence doesn’t just give patients false hope, it can cause real harm. Patients risk significant financial hardship for a product whose benefits are modest at best or nonexistent at worst and might even have dangerous side effects.

And yet, those of us on the outside also have the luxury of armchair regulating.

The FDA is often weighing data that might look promising but isn’t definitive, against patients’ urgent need for better treatments. “None of these decisions are going to be easy ones, where there is a single, objectively right answer,” says Holly Fernandez Lynch, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Making the right call means engaging with every stakeholder in order “to be flexible where flexibility is appropriate, and push back where flexibility is inappropriate,” she says.

Not all drugs will fall under Prasad’s purview (many of the cancer drugs he has criticized, for example, were reviewed by the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research). But he undoubtedly will be faced with deciding the fate of treatments for people with no other hope. Anyone who has listened in on advisory meetings for treatments for rare diseases like ALS or Duchenne muscular dystrophy will tell you that parent and patient testimonials can be gut-wrenching.

The gravity of those decisions calls for a degree of humility on the part of an FDA leader. And that’s the rub with Prasad: His public persona — often harsh and operating in the extremes rather than acknowledging the nuances — does not suggest he will strike the right tone in either his actions or words.

Ultimately, Prasad’s approach to regulating carries significant consequences for biotech and pharma companies, many of which are working on some of the most promising technological advances of the last two decades, including gene therapy and mRNA vaccines. Already many of those companies are struggling to come up with a viable business model for their products, which address very small patient populations. Raising the regulatory bar too high could push some out of the game entirely.

“If you make innovation too daunting, there’s going to be very little capital to fund it — and to find the next big breakthrough,” says Cantor Fitzgerald biotech analyst Josh Schimmer.

That doesn’t mean discoveries will screech to a halt, rather they will happen elsewhere, like China, he adds.

In his first meeting with FDA staff, Prasad reportedly struck a more even-keeled tone on the topic of rare disease drugs. He noted that “randomized controlled trials are not always necessary,” according to Inside Medicine, a Substack run by physician and public health researcher Jeremy Faust. And he apparently acknowledged that, “Evidence must also contextualize the condition — how rare and dire it is, and we should be flexible for the many people who do want to try things.”

While any glimmer of measured leadership is welcome, we should take it for what it is: a few rational sentences amid volumes of antagonistic posts on social media. We won’t truly know his threshold for approval until decisions start rolling out. That means for the foreseeable future, every advisory committee meeting and approval deadline for this critical corner of the FDA will be “big, binary events for the whole industry, each one a glimpse into where the bar is set now,” Schimmer says.

Even if he strikes a good balance, there’s another critical unknown to consider: Can he lead? Unlike his predecessors, Prasad does not have experience navigating the FDA. And he is walking into a downtrodden agency. Sweeping cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services did not spare the FDA, and even as some employees were called back, weeks of anxiety have taken a toll on morale. Many of those left behind, including experts who review new products, are looking for new jobs.

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And like with the entire slate of COVID contrarians leading our health agencies, there’s the lingering question of who will really call the shots on hot button issues like vaccines. If HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tries to interfere with products that fall under Prasad’s regulatory umbrella, will he push back? Some of his recent comments about the childhood vaccine schedule and the committee responsible for it veer too close to Kennedy’s views for comfort.

That could immediately affect fall COVID boosters, which Prasad now oversees. A post on his Substack suggests he is on board with recent comments by Makary suggesting updated vaccines need new studies, a position that would make it near impossible to get new shots authorized. “Folks who think COVID-19 vaccines should continue to roll out without randomized trials are anti-vaccine, anti-science, and pro-corporate,” Prasad wrote.

The concern now centers on a current threat, but we should also worry about the standard Prasad would set for future vaccines. His predecessor is credited with developing a clinical strategy that enabled COVID vaccines to be rolled out with breathtaking speed, ultimately saving millions of lives. How would Prasad treat the bar for authorization in an emergency?

All of this adds up to an intense period of uncertainty. The FDA has never been perfect or made everyone happy. But everyone seemed to largely understand the rules. With Prasad, that standard seems much less clear — and patients and industry alike will feel the impact.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.