'60 Minutes' Draws One of Its Smallest Audiences in Years Without Football Lead-In

"60 Minutes" posted one of its weakest audiences in years on Sunday, drawing 5.64 million viewers for the fifth episode of its current season, according to Nielsen data. The broadcast lacked a strong NFL game ahead of it, which typically boosts the show's numbers, but the result is still being viewed as a worrying sign for CBS.

Among viewers aged 25 to 54, the demographic most prized by advertisers in news programming, the program attracted just 558,000. Nielsen records show that since 2000, the newsmagazine had not fallen below seven million total viewers or one million in that advertiser category in a comparable early-season episode.

CBS News declined to make executives available for comment, and the network had not publicly released the Nielsen figures as of Tuesday evening. Four people familiar with the data confirmed the numbers. On Sunday night, "60 Minutes" ranked as the second-most-watched non-sports program on broadcast television, behind the CBS dramas "Tracker" and "Marshals." The newsmagazine usually finishes first in that category.

The comparison with last year is stark. Against the year-earlier telecast, which had a more robust football lead-in, Sunday's episode fell 60% in overall viewership and 81% among viewers between 25 and 54. The show is meant to channel NFL viewers into the rest of CBS's Sunday primetime lineup, and it has long ranked among the most-watched programs on TV that is not tied to sports. Sunday's telecast also competed with a late football game on Fox.

The results land at a delicate moment. CBS News is under intense pressure to show that the program is stable after a chaotic overhaul at the end of last season, even though that season ended with a notable 9% increase in overall viewership. Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, ousted Tanya Simon, an executive producer with years of history at the show, and installed Nick Bilton, a journalist and screenwriter with less formal television experience.

Correspondents Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were also pushed out, while Anderson Cooper left of his own volition when his contract ended. Their replacements include Ross Douthat and contributors such as Ariel Levy and Sebastian Junger. They have top-shelf backgrounds but little experience working on a weekly TV program built around long-form enterprise journalism.

Sunday's episode included an investigation into the Trump administration's efforts to deport people to countries where they have no ties. The segment found that some deportees are subsequently being forced back to the nations they originally fled. It echoed a story from last season in which Alfonsi examined the deportation of some migrants to harsh prisons in El Salvador, a report that stirred controversy because Weiss asked for it to be held at a late stage of production.

The episode also featured interviews with Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Tina Peters, a top election official whose sentence for a conviction tied to breaching her county's election system Polis commuted.