60 Minutes Season Premiere Ratings Plunge

60 Minutes just kicked off its new season with its smallest premiere audience since 2000, the Los Angeles Times reports. The CBS newsmagazine drew 7.9 million viewers Sunday, Nielsen says, a 21% slide from last year's opener and below its 2025-26 season average of 9.1 million. That's despite heavy promotion of an interview with an Air Force officer shot down over Iraq amid the US-Iran war, a conflict that has dragged on far longer than President Trump initially projected.

Network executives can point to softer NFL lead-in numbers from the game CBS aired, competition from NBC's Sunday Night Football, and ongoing complaints about Nielsen's methods. But the show is also debuting a reshaped lineup: four longtime correspondents are gone after clashes with new CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, who is steering the franchise in a new direction and has installed producers and commentators with little TV news experience.

CNN's take: "Paramount's overhaul of 60 Minutes, and all the outrage that followed, did not spur many new viewers to check out the season premiere." Per Variety, the show remained the most-watched news program and most-watched non-sports primetime program of the week, and CBS News released a statement expressing pride at the "exceptional journalism on display."