CBS's "60 Minutes" is facing blowback for its decision on Sunday.
The popular news magazine show, which typically airs right after NFL games in the fall, decided to air a widely talked about segment on Sunday night. But CBS didn't have an NFL game on Sunday. NBC, however, did.
The network was airing the Bears vs. Rams game on Sunday evening, right during the "60 Minutes" segment that had previously been shelved by the new head of the news division, Bari Weiss.
The segment, “Inside CECOT," detailed the awful conditions inside the El Salvadorian prison where hundreds of migrants were sent after being deported from the United States by President Trump's administration.
© Brendan Mcdermid-Reuters via Imagn Images.
If "60 Minutes" had aired the segment in a previous week, it could have had a massive built-in audience from an NFL game.
However, on Sunday night, tens of millions of people were watching the Rams at Bears game. Most of those people are not going to flip the channel to CBS to watch "60 Minutes."
"Holding something for a 60 minutes airing during a NFL playoff game is basically a catch and kill," one critic wrote.
"Yeah, that’s prime attention real estate frozen in time. Unless it’s activated properly, it’s just expensive suppression disguised as distribution. Seen that play out a lot in media and crypto," another wrote.
The network is facing blowback for its decision.
"Divisional Round games in the late-Sunday window are generally the most-watched of the weekend. The past two seasons, that window has earned 42.2 million viewers (2025 Ravens-Bills) and 50.4 million viewers (2024 Chiefs-Bills). One can expect Sunday’s Rams-Bears game to approach or eclipse the 50-million-viewer threshold, especially given the updated Nielsen methodologies," Awful Announcing wrote.
"A portion of those 50 million viewers might have watched 60 Minutes on another night when the show wasn’t facing direct NFL competition. But it seems that burying the story against a massive audience was the point."
It seems like a clear move, to be sure.