Here’s hoping Tony Dokoupil fully unplugs during his time off. On Thursday, Oliver Darcy’s Status reported that “CBS Evening News” achieved a “rare victory” by scoring its strongest weekly audience ratings in months. The show averaged 4.1 million viewers for the week of July 27, marking the show’s best performance in 17 weeks and the first time it has exceeded the 4-million-viewer mark since late March, according to Nielsen ratings data obtained by Status.But there’s also a pretty “awkward” caveat.Tony Dokoupil attends InStyle’s 30th Birthday Celebration in 2024.Dia Dipasupil via Getty ImagesDokoupil, the show’s anchor, had nothing to do with it. He’s on a two-week vacation, and CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman is filling in for him.Dokoupil hit an even 4 million viewers during the week of June 22, Status reports, but hasn’t pulled anything higher since March. The outlet notes that the 4 million views figure does hold significance. Previous CBS executives considered it “the minimum acceptable” number, and that the show has “struggled” to retain that benchmark ever since controversial editor-in-chief Bari Weiss handpicked Dokoupil for the anchoring gig amid her MAGA-friendly takeover of the network.Matt Gutman reports for ABC during election night in 2024.Lorenzo Bevilaqua via Getty ImagesAnd hey, if you happened to watch Dokoupil’s first day on the job in real time earlier this year — you can make plenty of assumptions about why viewers aren’t super jazzed about him at the helm. It seems his colleagues aren’t thrilled about him as well. Gutman’s spike in viewership is also prompting some experts in the industry to question why Dokoupil decided to take a two-week vacation when he only started the job in January.“Summer is when the second and third place networks try to make progress against the first place anchor who goes on vacation,” a source described as a “veteran television executive” told Status. “In this case the third place anchor took off for two weeks — a baffling move given his collapsing show — and his substitute outclassed him in the ratings.” That same source added that Dokoupil “missed” an opportunity to gain more traction and that the situation is “another dagger in Tony’s neck.”A CBS spokesperson told The Independent that Dokoupil has been “consistently trending up” and that the “network has confidence in Tony.”It also insisted that assuming that viewers just simply prefer Gutman over Dokoupil is misleading. The spokesperson said that all the network’s newscasts had higher numbers on the week of July 27 than July 20.“The week of 7/27 just generated more news, which is why all numbers were up for every show,” the spokesperson said. “Claiming it has something to do with a Matt/Tony split is false, just like it would be to suggest ABC News increasing viewers has to do with a Whit [Johnson]/David [Muir] split.”