For decades, evening-news broadcasts have given Americans a quick half-hour digest of the day’s most important headlines. Now CBS News is attempting to reinvent that familiar format for a new generation of viewers who prefer streaming platforms over traditional television. Veteran journalist John Dickerson is at the center of that effort. With the launch of CBS News Prime Time With John Dickerson, the network is offering an hour-long program designed not just to present the news, but to explain it, add perspective, and place stories within a broader historical and cultural context. The program premiered at 7 p.m. Eastern and airs live Monday through Thursday on CBS News’ streaming services, aiming squarely at younger, more tech-savvy audiences who are less likely to tune in to linear TV.

Dickerson has described his mission as going beyond the day’s soundbites. “The goal is to explore the world, figure out what is happening, why it’s happening, and report back in proportion and the right order,” he said in a statement. He hopes the show will evolve alongside the news cycle and the medium itself. CBS News executives, while declining to make Dickerson available for interviews ahead of the launch, have emphasized that his reputation for depth and clarity makes him the ideal figure to lead this experiment. For Dickerson, who has built his career as a political journalist and analyst with roles at Time, Slate, and later CBS, the project represents both a continuation of his career and an opportunity to try something distinctly new.

CBS is hardly alone in pursuing this space. ABC News and NBC News have both developed their own streaming versions of the evening news, reflecting the industry-wide belief that younger viewers are unlikely to stick with the legacy half-hour broadcast format. Linsey Davis anchors ABC News Live Prime on Disney’s streaming hub, while NBC News Now has Tom Llamas fronting Top Story, a 7 p.m. program that mixes breaking headlines with enterprise reporting and stories designed to appeal to underrepresented demographics. All of these ventures are unfolding alongside the still-popular network broadcasts—World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, and CBS Evening News—which, during the pandemic, saw audience surges that rivaled primetime entertainment shows. Even so, media executives remain convinced that broadband delivery is essential for reaching viewers whose lives no longer align with scheduled television habits.

The streaming news programs bring some advantages their broadcast predecessors cannot match. They are not tied to the rigid structure of commercial breaks and half-hour time slots, giving them freedom to expand on stories and allow for in-depth discussions. They also allow news divisions to showcase more of the journalism they produce daily but cannot always fit into a traditional broadcast. Yet they also face stiff competition, particularly from cable outlets. At the same 7 p.m. slot, Fox News features Jesse Watters, MSNBC airs Joy Reid, and CNN has traditionally relied on Erin Burnett. Those shows lean heavily on analysis and opinion, which CBS hopes to counter with a steadier, fact-based approach anchored by Dickerson.

Executives at CBS are framing CBS News Prime Time as a clear alternative to the opinion-driven programming that dominates prime time. “When you think of prime time in general, there is so much opinion out there and we’re fortunate to have a steward like John Dickerson anchoring a nightly show on our streaming channel to make sense of the day,” said Neeraj Khemlani, then-president and co-head of CBS News and Stations. For Dickerson, the show represents another chapter in his long and varied career at CBS. He joined the network after years covering politics in print and digital media, serving as political director before succeeding Bob Schieffer as anchor of Face the Nation in 2015. His thoughtful, analytical style earned respect, but soon after, he was moved to CBS This Morning amid internal shake-ups following Charlie Rose’s departure.

Since then, Dickerson has remained a versatile presence at CBS, contributing to election coverage, filling in on major broadcasts, and appearing on 60 Minutes. His resilience and adaptability may run in the family—his mother, Nancy Dickerson, was the first female correspondent at CBS News. Now her son is breaking ground of his own, taking CBS into an experimental format that could define the next era of evening news. While the concept of a streaming-first nightly newscast is still unproven, CBS is betting that audiences will embrace the combination of Dickerson’s authority and the flexibility of broadband delivery. For the network, it is a high-stakes effort to ensure that its storied brand of journalism remains relevant as viewing habits shift rapidly into the digital age.