Bari Weiss’ handpicked CBS anchor took two weeks off – and the show had its best ratings in months without him

When CBS News' Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss's hand-picked star anchor Tony Dokoupil took a two week vacation, a curious thing happened; more people actually watched his show. During his two-week hiatus, another CBS journalist — Matt Gutman — filled in behind the CBS Evening News desk. During his first week, Gutman drew 4.1 million viewers, which was the program's best performance in 17 weeks and the first time it exceeded 4 million viewers since the end of March, according to media journalist Oliver Darcy of Status. Whether or not the audience is rejecting Dokoupil, embracing Gutman, or a little bit of both, remains to be seen. Dokoupil was one of Weiss's earliest staffing announcements after she took over the network in October. He pulled 4 million viewers during the week of June 22, but he