After a huge ratings success during her first week hosting the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric’s ratings have dropped so much that the evening news broadcast at CBS has now dropped once again to number three (3) in the ratings. This is sad news for fans, like me, of Katie Couric and it proves that just putting a pretty face on a national evening television news program will not generate big ratings success over the long run. While most television has gone to sensational coverage, all three major broadcast network news programs have pretty much stuck to mainstream news and I’m glad there is at least one place on television these days which still looks at the world with a serious point of view.
My personal favorite network news anchor, Brian Williams at NBC Nightly News, is back in his ratings leadership position, where he belongs. ABC News, hosted by Charles Gibson is hold a strong second place while poor Katie and her new news format at CBS has dropped to third (3rd) position, once again. Another thing that is hurting Couric at CBS is the fact that so many big stories are breaking right now in the US and around the world and folks, like me, who like good serious news, instead of a tabloid format are wanting to find out what is really going on without the celebrity spin.
A friend of mine once told me that people always progress to their highest level of incompetence. I’m still not sure what he meant by that statement, but in a rudimentary way, I think what he was saying is that every one of us reaches our peak performance in a job and if we somehow move up further than we were meant to be, then everything starts falling apart around us.
It is hard for me to blame the latest problems at CBS News on Katie Couric because they wined and dined this woman and offered her twice as much money per year than her other competitors were earning, combined, just to get her to leave NBC’s Today Show and take a chance on leading CBS News. This decision to leave the Today Show, at NBC, will most likely be the worst decision Katie Couric has made in her great career and while there is no one who is saying that she is washed up at the network level, I believe there is a good chance she will not be sitting in that anchor chair at CBS News at this same time next year.
In a positive way it is reassuring to me that at least at the major broadcast network level, most Americans prefer to just get hard, real life, news and they leave the sensational coverage to some cable news networks or syndicated TV shows like Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight. American’s need at least one national broadcast where hard news is still covered because there are still millions of Americans who want to learn the real story about events that effect their world, without asking some stooge in Hollywood what they think about the issues of the day.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
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