CBS Mornings, the last-place morning show struggling to regain its footing, is pulling out of its state-of-the-art Times Square studio at 1515 Broadway after just four years, sources told The Post on March 21, 2025. The program—anchored by Gayle King, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil—will return to its former, less glamorous digs at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in September, a retreat driven by a desperate bid to slash costs at a network facing financial strain according to a report from the New York Post. The move, which ditches a multimillion-dollar setup, comes as CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon executes a broader $500 million budget cut mandated by Paramount Global ahead of its anticipated merger with Skydance Media.
The Times Square studio, launched with fanfare in September 2021 at Paramount’s headquarters—once home to MTV’s TRL—was billed as a high-tech upgrade when then-co-presidents Neeraj Khemlani and McMahon moved the show from its “dingy” Hell’s Kitchen base. “The new studio in the heart of Times Square will bring us a wealth of new opportunities for high-quality production,” Khemlani told NewsCastStudio then. Yet, the show’s ratings have cratered, hitting an all-time weekly low of under 1.87 million viewers last week per Nielsen, trailing ABC’s Good Morning America (2.8 million) and NBC’s Today (2.5 million).
The return to West 57th means sharing a revamped but cramped studio with CBS Evening News, recently relocated from Washington, D.C., after Norah O’Donnell’s exit. “The studio is much smaller. There’s no space for couches for when the morning show hosts interview A-listers,” a source noted, despite upgrades like an LED floor. Paramount’s cost-cutting extends beyond CBS News—renting out the vacated 1515 Broadway space or shrinking its real estate footprint are possibilities as the Skydance deal looms. “The atmosphere at CBS News is one of fear,” another insider said, with staffers wary of job losses under McMahon, whose leadership has faced scrutiny amid rumors her role is shaky.
Since moving to Times Square, CBS Mornings has weathered complaints—King and crew griped about blocked windows obscuring the iconic view (replaced by LED screens) and overnight heat shutoffs leaving the set frigid. The network’s spent millions on the space, only to see layoffs (post-2023 Khemlani ouster) and a pivot to local news sourcing under McMahon’s centralization push. With Paramount bleeding cash—Apple TV+’s $1 billion loss pales next to this shakeup—the retreat signals surrender in the morning wars, swapping luxe for lean as merger pressures mount. CBS News declined comment, but the move speaks volumes: survival trumps swagger in 2025.
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