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USA Edition | Today Is Tuesday, March 9, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Tuesday, March 9, 2010 |
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Inaugural Broadcast -- CBS Evening News With Katie Couric
Unfortunately I have found out that many viewers are afraid of change. The glory days of TV news are over, and the media landscape has been dramatically changed. News is available now for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and everybody fights for the last pieces of the shrinking pie.
Katie Couric, CBS News
New York – On September 5th, 2008, Katherine Ann Couric will end her second year on the CBS Evening News With Katie Couric. For some, Ms. Couric’s tenure at the CBS anchor desk is exciting and reassuring. For Ms. Couric’s supporters, the reasons for celebration are many: Women matter in television, The Camelot Era in news survives, news can be more fun and entertaining.
Edward R. Murrow -- CBS' Original Voice Of God
Couric is a woman of immense character — possessed of guts and determination earned the hard way — during her long tenure at NBC. She is an appealing and successful TV star who appears undaunted by her detractors and largely unaware of her limitations as either strategist or journalist. As is common among those who earn TV stardom, she sees the world as an extension of herself. For Ms. Couric the issue is not her suitability for the job, nor the increasingly limited capabilities of CBS News. The issue is, and always has been, the inflexibility of news viewers — with all of their expectations that network news broadcasts be relevant, credible and probative.
Leslie Moonves’ ( president, CBS ) willingness to let Couric remake the broadcast to fit her persona resulted in a very different Evening News — albeit one that many viewers didn’t accept. It didn’t take long for Couric’s vision of a friendlier and hipper news summery to crash head-long into a wall of reality when viewers rebelled. Thus began a series of adjustments and remakes as Couric and Sean McManus ( president, CBS News and Sports ) sought to make the broadcast more competitive in news content. Head’s rolled. Rome Hartman was out — Rick Kaplan was in.
Only last month, Couric was counted among the network anchors who traveled to the middle east to cover Barack Obama’s grand tour of the region. While in Tel Aviv, Israel, Couric was quoted by HAARETZ having said,
“I have no doubt in my heart that I made the right move, accepting the CBS offer. I would have regretted it otherwise. It’s true that the pressure was immense and the expectations almost impossible. One person cannot perform such miracles and transform a whole network on his own.
“It’s also true I’m not doing today exactly what I’ve been brought to do, and that my chance to express myself is fairly limited in the 22-minutes format, but I still enjoy my work, I think it’s important and fascinating, and do believe we can make a change with time, bit by bit.
“Unfortunately I have found out that many viewers are afraid of change. The glory days of TV news are over, and the media landscape has been dramatically changed. News is available now for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and everybody fights for the last pieces of the shrinking pie.
“The corporate pressure and the ratings terror are intensifying all the time, and the situation is not simple. I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance, and realizing what Hillary Clinton might have realized not long ago: that sexism in the American society is more common than racism, and certainly more acceptable or forgivable. In any case, I think my post and Hillary’s race are important steps in the right direction.”
Katie Couric with Marvin Kalb
Her two years at the anchor desk have not been easy for Couric, or her employer. She is to be congratulated for the accomplishment, for few in broadcast news might have believed she had the tenacity to persevere or that Leslie Moonves’ support would not wain when things got tough. But what has emerged since the arrival of EP Rick Kaplan are two broadcasts — his and hers. At times the bifurcation is clear and abrupt, while at others, such as when traveling overseas, it is seamless.
While there is little suggestion that Rick Kaplan has changed his standards or journalistic instinct to favor Couric’s personality, there is clear evidence that Couric has accepted the Voice of God role — at least in his segment of the program. She may have made this change grudgingly, as is suggested by her public comments in the last year, but she has also done it very well. Her perception of herself and her audience, however, appear to have changed little in the last two years.
Those pesky viewers, she might sometimes wonder, always want more news — don’t they understand we’re doing a television show here? And why shouldn’t she think this way? — she is a TV star. She is paid handsomely for her TV stardom value. She knows that the world revolves around her — at least at CBS. She also knows that Couric is money in the bank for CBS and news isn’t.
She is not alone, for television’s star system is what makes money. In that regard, Couric is just like her male counterpart Brian Williams. Both are major television stars fronting news broadcasts. Both bask in the reflected glory of those gone before — Cronkite, Huntley, Rather, Brinkley, Chancellor and Jennings. What’s different is that Couric is an entertainer seeking to appear as a journalist while Williams is a journalist seeking to be an entertainer.
Both disparage the Honorable Profession in broadcasting.
