When cameraman Randy Schmidt collapsed during a live broadcast from Taiwan, CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil was forced to halt the program mid-show, calling for medical help on air as the camera shook and the feed abruptly cut to stock footage.
The incident marked the latest disaster for a struggling broadcast already facing historic ratings lows and criticism over Dokoupil’s rocky tenure as anchor. Schmidt was “okay and recovering,” the CBS Evening News account on X confirmed shortly after the broadcast.
The medical emergency interrupted Dokoupil’s scripted introduction of a summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. A loud thud was heard off-camera during the closing segment, and Dokoupil, 45, froze mid-sentence before asking: “Is he OK?”
“We’re going to take a quick break. We have a medical emergency here,” he told viewers, adding that the team was “calling a doctor.” The broadcast then cut to CBS correspondent John Dickerson in New York, who signed off for the night. Muffled voices could be heard as Dokoupil composed himself, and the feed switched to supplemental footage of Chinese landscapes.
Ratings Pressure Mounts on a Struggling Anchor
CBS Evening News has been hemorrhaging viewers since Dokoupil took over earlier in the year. His first broadcast was marked by a glaring mistake in which he introduced himself twice within 80 seconds and openly admitted, “first day, big problems here.”
Recent weeks saw the program average just 3.7 million total viewers and 473,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic — the lowest Adults 25-54 demo rating in the program’s history. ABC World News Tonight pulled 8.2 million viewers and 976,000 in the demo during the same period, while NBC Nightly News averaged 6.1 million viewers and 903,000 in the demo.
The contrast was particularly sharp during this coverage, when NBC News anchor Tom Llamas and ABC News anchor David Muir were both broadcasting from Beijing — roughly one thousand seventy miles away — where President Trump had landed for the summit with Xi. Dokoupil, meanwhile, was reporting from Taipei after failing to secure a visa for the People’s Republic of China. It remains unclear whether the issue stemmed from a late application or another complication.
Cascade of Technical Failures
Schmidt’s collapse came at the end of a broadcast plagued by technical problems from the start. Dokoupil struggled visibly with his earpiece throughout the program, and awkward pauses followed segments by CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, reporting from Beijing, and foreign correspondent Anna Coren.
When Jiang tried to toss the broadcast back to Dokoupil with a simple “Tony,” the feed cut to a confused anchor clutching his earpiece. He remained silent for roughly eight seconds before recovering, thanking Jiang and moving on.
An Emmy-winning network television executive described the program as “amateur, amateur, amateur hour” and dubbed it a “cascade failure.”
Before the chaos erupted, Dokoupil had attempted to frame the stakes of his Taipei posting. “On the surface, it might look like all the action is over there,” he told viewers, gesturing toward Beijing. “But if you zoom out from the state visit, you see one of the most important geopolitical stories of our time.”
A Last-Minute Deployment From Tokyo
Schmidt, a longtime fixture of CBS News’ now-shuttered Tokyo bureau, had been deployed to Taiwan on extraordinarily short notice, sources told the New York Post. He was informed early one morning, Tokyo time, that he would need to fly to Taipei to support Dokoupil’s coverage of the Trump-Xi summit.
He boarded an afternoon flight, landed in Taiwan in the evening, and arrived at his hotel shortly thereafter. The broadcast aired in the evening New York time, which translated to early morning Taiwan time the following day. Tokyo sits just one hour ahead of Taipei, but Taiwan is 12 hours ahead of New York City.
One critic alleged Schmidt had worked a punishing shift before collapsing, but a CBS News source pushed back, saying the cameraman had downtime and rested before the broadcast. According to the network source, a local producer and fixer was physically with Schmidt from the start, additional crew members arrived before airtime, and Schmidt remained in constant contact with CBS operations staff in London throughout the setup.
Schmidt brought his own broadcast equipment from Tokyo — standard practice for freelancers, who typically travel with eight to ten equipment cases. Schmidt traveled lighter with three gear cases and two carry-on bags, and was paid extra because CBS used his rig. A driver hired by the network helped haul the equipment from the airport.
For Dokoupil and the team behind him, however, the questions raised by the broadcast — about preparation, planning and the strategic missteps that left CBS in the wrong China — appear far from resolved.
