The ratings for CBS Mornings took a beating right after longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley was fired, reported Status’ Oliver Darcy, with the show potentially facing its “worst-rated June ever.”

Pelley exited CBS News in explosive fashion at the beginning of the month, clashing with 60 Minutes’ new executive producer Nick Bilton at his very first staff meeting and vocally objecting to Bilton’s claims that editor-in-chief Bari Weiss “loves 60 Minutes.”

Pelley accused Weiss, who was handpicked for the role by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, of “murdering” the show and having “no qualifications for her job.”

Pelley also took several critical shots directly at Bilton, specifically over his own “slender qualifications” for the role and to express his objections to the firings of several other key 60 Minutes staffers, including EP Tanya Simon, correspondent Cecilia Vega, and longtime executive editor Draggan Mihailovich. 

Long story short, Bilton fired Pelley, Pelley publicly bashed Weiss for “putting a thumb on the scale” to benefit President Donald Trump, and called for her to be ousted from her role.

The Pelley drama has caused some collateral damage for the network’s morning show, according to Darcy’s newsletter on Monday evening. CBS News “appeared to suffer an immediate repercussion in the ratings” in the aftermath of Pelley’s firing, wrote Darcy, and this notably included CBS Mornings seeing “viewership plunge the day after Pelley’s dismissal.”

CBS Mornings has been “the perpetually third-place morning show,” Darcy noted, but June’s numbers were especially brutal, with Nielsen ratings data he obtained showing that the show averaged 1.8 million total viewers (313,000 in the 25-54 demo that’s the darling of advertisers) on June 3, the day Pelley was fired, and dropping to 1.59 million total viewers (225,000 in the demo).

That amounts to “an 11% slip in total audience and a staggering 28% drop in the demo,” wrote Darcy, math that “alarmed some officials” at CBS News.

The viewer numbers improved over the following days, so “any apparent viewer protest over Pelley’s firing may have been short-lived,” but Weiss’ team is “still presiding over some of the worst ratings in the program’s history,” wrote Darcy.

According to the Nielsen data reviewed by Darcy, CBS Mornings “delivered its worst-rated May on record” and now “is on pace for its worst-rated June ever, averaging just 1.7 million total viewers and 275,000 in the demo.”

The woes at CBS Mornings have received less media coverage than those at the network’s evening show, CBS Evening News, and its new Weiss-appointed anchor, Tony Dokoupil, but the show’s ratings struggles “may be causing even greater anxiety” for CBS News executives, Darcy theorized, because it’s the morning shows that  “generate the lion’s share of their advertising revenue” for broadcast networks.

In other words, “ratings declines translate directly into revenue declines,” wrote Darcy, arguing that the CBS Mornings ratings problems were “yet another sign that CBS News is grappling with a broader brand image problem under Weiss,” accusing her of having “alienated the network’s core audience,” and finding those viewers “very difficult” to lure back.

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