Overview
- CBS confirmed Hasselbeck will appear Monday through Wednesday next week during the program’s 8 a.m. hour as a special guest host alongside Gayle King and Nate Burleson.
- The network says Hasselbeck will be confined to lifestyle and pop-culture segments such as 'Talk of the Table,' parenting and entertainment and will not handle hard news or political coverage.
- Executives view her appearances as one of several summer on-air auditions being used to evaluate new co-host chemistry after Tony Dokoupil moved to the CBS Evening News and Tom Cibrowski was assigned to oversee the morning show.
- Nielsen data for the week ended June 5 shows CBS Mornings averaged about 1.69 million viewers and roughly 285,000 in the 25–54 demo, figures that lag far behind Today and Good Morning America and are cited as the main reason for the overhaul.
- Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss’s recent editorial changes are framed as a larger push to broaden perspectives on the network, a shift that could lead CBS to add more lifestyle-first and ideologically diverse voices if the tryouts succeed.