Tony Dokoupil will anchor CBS Evening News on Saturday evening, helming the broadcast two days before his planned debut, following the U.S. operation to run Venezuela and capture its leader, Nicolás Maduro.
The show will broadcast from CBS’s station in San Francisco. Dokoupil will then have his official launch on Monday from the network’s New York studios.
Dokoupil’s first week was to have launched in Miami as part of a tour of 10 cities in ten days, before moving to the studio in New York. That tour, called Live from America, will begin later next week, the network said.
The network has been heavily promoting Dokoupil ahead of his debut, particularly on social media, where he appeared in a video asserting that the broadcast would have independence from its corproate ownership while decrying instances where the press “missed the story.”
He said, “Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.”
On Friday, the network unveiled a set of “five simple principles” for the broadcast, including “We love America. And we make no apologies for saying so.”
He also responded to a comment on Instagram who lamented the network loss of its “tiffany shine” in the years since Walter Cronkite. “I can promise you we’ll be more accountable and more transparent that Cronkite or any one else of his era.”
