'CBS This Morning' suffers severe ratings drop since anchor shake-up

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"CBS This Morning" has taken a ratings hit since the network shuffled its news anchors last month, losing 21 percent of key demo viewers according to Nielsen.

In May, CBS News announced that Gayle King would remain as anchor of its morning news show and would be joined by network journalists Anthony Mason and Tony Dokoupil, replacing co-anchors Norah O'Donnell, who will be making her debut as anchor of "CBS Evening News" in July, and John Dickerson, who has become a correspondent for the network's iconic magazine show "60 Minutes."

However, between O'Donnell and Dickerson's May 6 exit and June 17, the ratings of "CBS This Morning" dropped from 3.127 million viewers to 2.704 million viewers, which is a 14 percent decrease in total viewers. The damage is even worse among the coveted key demos. As reported by Forbes, there was an 18 percent decrease from the 25-54 demo and a 21 percent decrease from the 18-49 demo.

This is a significant setback for CBS since its morning program had been closing the ratings gap between itself and ABC's "Good Morning America" and NBC's "Today," which have dominated the weekday timeslot for years on broadcast television. "CBS This Morning" had a ratings high of 3.83 million viewers in 2017.

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The network is hoping that O'Donnell will revive "CBS Evening News" after the program struggled under anchor Jeff Glor, who is co-anchoring "CBS This Morning: Saturday."

In response to the report, CBS News invoked the overall decline in ratings within the landscape of broadcast networks, pointing to a nine percent decline from ABC and a twelve percent decline from NBC in total viewers.