CBS News, Katie Couric Are Likely to Part Ways

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

CBS News, Katie Couric Are Likely to Part Ways
Barring a Change, Departure Could Follow the Election; A Successor to Larry King?
By REBECCA DANA
April 10, 2008; Page B1

After two years of record-low ratings, both CBS News executives and people close to Katie Couric say that the "CBS Evening News" anchor is likely to leave the network well before her contract expires in 2011 -- possibly soon after the presidential inauguration early next year. Ms. Couric isn't even halfway through her five-year contract with CBS, which began in June 2006 and pays an annual salary of around $15 million. But CBS executives are under pressure to cut costs and improve ratings for the broadcast, which trails rival newscasts on ABC and NBC by wide margins.

Her departure would cap a difficult episode for CBS, which brought Ms. Couric to the network with considerable fanfare in a bid to catapult "Evening News" back into first place. Excluding several weeks of her tenure, Ms. Couric never bested the ratings of interim anchor Bob Schieffer, who was named to host the broadcast temporarily after "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather left the newscast in the wake of a discredited report on George W. Bush's National Guard service.

(snip)

Assuming the two part ways, it's unclear what will happen to either the "Evening News" or Ms. Couric. CBS executives are investigating which prominent news personalities are nearing the end of their contracts. One possible new job for Ms. Couric: succeeding Larry King at CNN. Mr. King, who is 74 years old, has a contract with the network into 2009. CNN President Jon Klein, a CBS veteran with close ties to some at the network, has expressed admiration for Ms. Couric's work, and the two are friends. They had lunch in late January, and the anchor attended Mr. Klein's birthday party in March. Time Warner Inc.'s CNN said, "Larry King is a great talent who consistently delivers the highest profile guests, and we have no plans to make a change." Through a publicist, Mr. King declined to comment. Mr. King's talk-show slot at CNN might be a better fit than evening-newscast anchor for Ms. Couric, who is 51. She made her reputation as a skilled interviewer when she was an anchor at the "Today" show on General Electric Co.'s NBC network.

(snip)

When she started on the show in September 2006, Ms. Couric incorporated longer interviews, occasionally conducted in front of a fireplace, and chatty asides into the broadcast. For the first few days, curiosity drove more than 10 million viewers to tune in, but in the months that followed, Ms. Couric's ratings plummeted to a low for the broadcast, bottoming out to around five million in the spring of 2007 -- well below the seven million viewers the show was drawing before Ms. Couric's arrival. Since then, the network has scaled back its ambitions drastically, returning to a traditional format. Ratings have ticked up modestly, but Ms. Couric's show is still placing a distant third. For the week of March 31, the "CBS Evening News" drew an average of 5.9 million viewers. By contrast, NBC's "Nightly News With Brian Williams" drew 8.3 million viewers and ABC's "World News With Charles Gibson" drew eight million.

(snip)

CBS is in a particularly difficult situation because its affiliate TV station group is weaker than those of other broadcast networks, a result of the loss of some of its strongest affiliates to News Corp.'s Fox network in 1993 after Fox outbid CBS for the right to air National Football League's NFC games. (Last year, News Corp. bought Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.) With its profitability declining sharply, hurt by lower local-TV ad revenue, CBS's affiliate group has been cutting costs. It laid off 160 employees at sites scattered around the country several weeks ago.

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[niyad]

1. katie, we hardly knew ye--or cared.

[Hugabear]

2. Picking Katie Couric was a mistake

I would have much rather seen Barbara Walters as the news anchor. For the evening news, you need someone with that 'gravitas' factor. Couric simply never had that.

[question everything]

3. Or with Lesley Stahl who is a terrific journalist

as well as a good interviewer.

Walters is too much of a softie for my taste.

[samdogmom]

4. Someday--maybe these "corporations" will figure out that we want REAL news--not fluff and stuff!

Can we bring back Dan Rather?

Katie's going to be just fine--she signed a huge contract--she's very rich...but she was very useless.

Gosh--it's so telling when people like me (a non high-priced network consultant could predict Katie's demise before she even started. Go figure! Do you think I can get a network consulting job?)

[Warpy]

5. The problem is the CONTENT, not the person reading

the teleprompter. They can change warm bodies all they want to, but unless they give up that turn to the hard, radical right, they're not going to get any of their old audience back.

They failed to woo conservatives away from other networks because we all know conservatives hate to change anything, even the channel.

Couric didn't fail as much as the editorial staff did. They threw away the audience they had on the vain hope of attracting a new one with big names on the far right as "guests," something the news never had before.

I gave up on televised news in 2004. I just got sick of being lied to.