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CBS News is tapping another ABC News veteran to lend a hand with the ambitious task of trying to move its morning- and evening-news programs out of third place.
Steven Baker, a former executive producer at ABC News’
“Nightline,” joined CBS News as a consultant earlier this week, according to two people familiar with the matter. During his tenure at ABC News, Baker gained a reputation as someone willing to experiment and try new things. Baker supervised an effort, for example, to try and put “Nightline” programming in places other than the post-Jimmy Kimmel slot at ABC. Under his aegis, for example, “Nightline” developed an hour-long special program for the Freeform cable network that aimed for younger viewers. In 2020, he helped orchestrate a “takeover” of the “Nightline” timeslotby “Turning Point,” a monthlong look at the state of race relations in the U.S.
“’Nightline’ is more than just a time slot,” Baker told Variety in 2018. “This is a brand that tells stories, no matter where it is seen.” CBS News declined to make executives available for comment.
“Steve’s going to be working with me directly as a consultant and advisor on our daily news programs,” CBS News President Tom Cibrowski said to a group of staffers, according to a person who was present at a recent meeting. “Steve’s going to bring a lot of energy and ideas, and he’s going be a great partner to the show leaders,” Cibrowski added, nodding to Jon Tower and Kim Harvey, who oversee “CBS Mornings” and “CBS Evening News,” respectively. Cibrowski said he hoped Baker would be “injecting some new energy and ideas into the programs.”
Baker had until recently been working with James Goldston, a former ABC News president who joined Candle Media, the production company led by former Disney executives Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer, to lead a nonfiction division.
The move shows CBS News relying more heavily, perhaps, on an executive with a more traditional TV-news pedigree than some of the senior executives who have been lured recently to the Paramount Skydance news division by Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News. Weiss has hired a number of veteran journalists from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times whose main expertise is in managing traditional print-news processes. She is not the only one. NBC News in 2023 named Rebecca Blumenstein, a veteran of the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as its president of editorial.
Still, CBS News’ main challenge in the current era is in generating more TV ratings, not in the quality of its newsgathering. “CBS Mornings” lured an average of just 1.6 million viewers in the third quarter, according to Nielsen, and 256,000 among viewers between 25 and 54, the demographic coveted most by advertisers in news programming. “CBS Evening News” has seen a slight uptick in viewers compared to the year-earlier period, but its overall audience is significantly below thatleft by former anchor Norah O’Donnell in early 2025.
Both programs remain well behind their time-slot competitors at ABC and NBC.
Baker is the latest ABC News mainstay to join CBS. Cibrowski was a former senior executive at ABC News who played a significant role in boosting “Good Morning America” past “Today”for the first time in years. Matt Guttman, a former ABC News journalist, has enjoyed significant screen time at CBS News since joining in 2026. And Wendy Fisher, once a senior ABC News executive, oversees broader newsgathering and weather coverage across CBS News and CBS’ owned stations.
CBS News has tested other innovations in recent weeks. On “CBS Evening News,” for example, new segments like “The Big Question” and “The Good Stuff” are viewed as distinctive pieces of the program that not only serve as regular features, but can be detached from the show and featured as pieces of short-form content suitable for viewers of digital platforms.
