CBS Mornings Finally Wakes Up, But NBC’s Today Still Eats Their Breakfast

Anyone catch CBS Mornings patting themselves on the back this week for, wait for it, “growing across the board”? Fun fact: when your baseline is a flatline, any blip looks like a heartbeat. Sure, the latest Nielsen numbers show CBS Mornings notched up its viewership in the week of June 15, but let’s not kid ourselves—NBC’s Today is still the only show eating at the big kids’ table, clocking its 21st consecutive week as the ratings king. That’s five months of total dominance, while CBS is still measuring progress in centimeters.

Let’s break it down for those who still think incremental growth means you’re a contender: Today’s lead is so wide, they could air a rerun of last summer’s weather map and still crush the competition. NBC’s morning juggernaut isn’t just beating CBS and ABC’s Good Morning America; it’s lapping them. You want receipts? Try more than a half-million daily viewer margin—enough people to fill Citi Field six times over, every single morning. CBS’s “win” is the media equivalent of celebrating a participation trophy on a sweltering Brooklyn sidewalk.

What’s really happening here is classic PR sleight of hand. CBS PR flacks crow about “growth across the board” because they know the real number—second or third place, with a gap as wide as FDR Drive at rush hour—doesn’t look as pretty in a press release. If you’ve ever spent a Monday morning watching the spin, you know these ratings reports are as much about perception as reality. The ad buyers know it, the network execs know it, and anyone with a functioning remote knows it.

Meanwhile, ABC’s Good Morning America is so bland this season it might as well be background noise at a Midtown hotel breakfast buffet. CBS is hustling, but NBC’s Today is the only one with a line out the door. If you’re still buying the narrative that CBS’s incremental gains matter in the face of NBC’s steamroller, you’re probably the same person who thinks keyword stuffing still works in 2026.

My uncomfortable advice: Stop reading press releases. If you want to know who’s winning the morning, check the raw numbers, not the self-congratulatory emails from network comms. And if you’re CBS, stop crowing about growth until you can actually close the gap. NBC isn’t just beating you—they’re making you look small.