We just celebrated our 20 year anniversary last week, and one of the things I inherited in the marriage was the Morning Having Of The Coffee and on Sundays, the Watching of CBS Sunday Morning at 9am.
For over 20 years, we have watched the bulk of over 1000 programs, only missing when we had an early call for a show or rehearsal, or were on vacation and not really caring about TV.
We slept in this morning (1/18/26), and I did not turn on the TV until about 9:30am, but literally right before, I said “I know we’re not supposed to watch CBS anymore, but as long as they haven’t changed the Sunday Morning program, I think we can watch it”.
Not ten minutes later, the beloved and well-known magazine formula program aired a “correspondent report” from Gaza, with a subtly pro-Trump angle.
OK, I thought, that wasn’t so bad.
Then another “correspondent report” introduced as a report to keep us “up to date” with what’s going on in Minneapolis.
And the first sound they produce is from a guy yelling “can’t you see they’re replacing you?”, followed by the super important footage of the Support ICE rally or whatever it was, replete with Trump flags flying, and then I heard something about “supporting the ICE mission” (or words to that effect) and I grabbed the remote and muted the TV.
Then I turned the TV completely off.
Then I turned it on again and changed the channel to what turned out to be a fun episode of Batman, with Batgirl, the Joker AND Eartha Kitt as Catwoman.
In fairness I admit, no, I did not watch the entire segments, but to be also fair, after watching over a thousand of their programs, I know when something is “different”. I started to suspect in the first segment when I kept even just hearing the word “Trump” over and over.
Yes, he’s our president and it would not be unusual to hear a president’s name in a TV segment that is nominally related to news, but that’s kinda the point: I don’t remember 4 years of hearing Biden’s name mentioned so many times in three months worth of programs as I heard Trump’s name this morning in about 2 minutes. Same with Obama, and in general the same with Bush (although he came up a bit more because of actual war).
The change in the tone of the program was stark and obvious.
And now, I shall take this diary, reword it a bit, and send off an email to whoever is the appropriate person to send stuff like this at CBS to, explaining why they just lost two loyal, 20-year-long viewers of one of their programs, which was the last one we were still agreeing we would watch on that network.
Are you a watcher of this program? Have you noticed a change? Chime in with poll and/or comments below.
