Many of you, I have to assume, were watching TV in the late 1960s as images of blood and death in Vietnam and protests against that war were becoming more frequent features of the evening network news.

Viewership of those programs was still on the rise then, and would continue to grow, peaking in around 1980, when the three major networks of ABC, CBS and NBC averaged roughly 53 million nightly news viewers. That is, if you are counting, with nearly one in four Americans watching.

The person most viewed was Walter Cronkite of CBS, “the most trusted man in America,” or so it was determined in a national poll in 1972.

Cronkite’s final full year as anchor was 1980, and in retirement, he watched as the expansion of cable television and digital media began to fragment audiences. As the population grew, viewership diminished. (The same can be said about newspaper subscribers, as well.)

By 2000, network TV news shows attracted 32 million viewers; by 2006, there were 26 million. And now? About 20 million — still a lot of people, and so how many of you are watching Tony Dokoupil?

He is, if you haven’t heard, the new anchorman of “CBS Evening News,” having spent six years at “CBS Mornings” alongside Gayle King and Nate Burleson. He said in interviews that this new job was “a little bit terrifying,” adding that “people really care about this show, and justifiably.”

He got off to a rough start. Scheduled to begin on Jan. 5, he was called to duty two days before to sit at the anchor desk for the breaking story of the U.S. strike in Venezuela and the capture of that country’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Once he started, he began by taking a gimmicky “Live from America” road tour across the country, a new city every night. There he was at the Golden Gate Bridge and at Denver’s Union Station. At a Ford plant outside Detroit, he chatted with President Donald Trump. On Jan. 14, he took a Chicago “L” ride, visited West Garfield Park and stood with Mayor Brandon Johnson for a live interview during which the mayor discussed his administration’s focus on investing in disinvested neighborhoods.

Viewership did not get an anticipated kick up by attracting curiosity seekers during Dokoupil’s first month, but one person watching intensely was Bari Weiss. A political commentator and opinion journalist, once writing for the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, she is the founder of media company The Free Press. Last October, billionaire David Ellison, boss of Paramount Skydance, bought The Free Press for $150 million and named Weiss the editor-in-chief of CBS News, another Paramount Skydance property.

At 41 years old and with no previous experience in broadcast journalism, Weiss became an object of head-scratching, criticism and anxiety. Would the network and its owners bow to the Trump administration?

She got off to a rocky start and seemed to confirm some fears when she pulled a segment from the CBS’ “60 Minutes” about Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to an El Salvador prison notorious for its conditions.

She said the story needed further reporting. Her critics got more ammunition when she then hosted a prime-time “town hall” with Erika Kirk, the widow of the assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The anointing of Dokoupil in mid-December may have surprised some viewers. It reminded me of Cronkite but for most people it was of modest interest.

For decades the three major networks had a monopoly on news. That has been broken for keeps and Weiss seems to understand that, having told her staff — in a speech later released to the media — that, “We can’t reverse time’s arrow. (Walter Cronkite) had two competitors. We have 2 billion, give or take.

“Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.”

In 1980, his last full year on the air, Cronkite attracted 30 million pairs of eyes to his nightly news program. He was the preeminent television newsman of the 20th century. In fact, the word “anchorman” was first used to describe his role in covering the 1952 political conventions in Chicago for CBS.

Now, few care. Anybody remember when Tom Llamas replaced Lester Holt on the NBC evening news? That happened in June. Have any idea who Dokoupil has replaced? Well, that would be John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.

It is, I suppose, only a matter of time until there does not exist any nightly network news shows. In thinking about Cronkite, I came across a few things he said.

He said, “As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: ‘And that’s the way it is.’ To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.”

He also said, “The profession of journalism ought to be about telling people what they need to know — not what they want to know.”

I don’t know if Dokoupil knows much about Cronkite. He didn’t seem to during a recent to-do on a CBS Instagram post.

A viewer wrote, “I grew up on Cronkite. Too bad CBS has lost its Tiffany shine. But good luck to you anyway.”

Dokoupil’s insulting reply — “I can promise you we’ll be more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or anyone else of his era” — outraged others and made me wonder how long this anchorman might last.

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(Rick Kogan is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.)

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