I still say this is the most bone-headed move CBS could make. Disregarding her politics, Couric is not an anchor-type person. Her voice is too high-pitched, plus she does NOT look attractive when she isn't smiling. She is not going to be credible to the few CBS viewers left (mostly older generation) who are used to men in the spot, and I don't think putting on her "serious glasses" will even help her.
Yeah, and who cares anyhow.
Back in the late 80's and early 90's we were trying to figure out what to do with our AM station. Rush was on and doing well in a market about 30 miles from our station.
My Daughter came up with the idea of using registered voting lists to poll people about various types of talk radio. Since political talk radio was in its infancy we were interested to know if there was a market for liberal talk radio. She was thinking we might go liberal in the morning and conservative in the afternoon(Rush noon to 3). The idea was the station would have two distinct audiences to sell.
The Results were astounding. In the predominately Democratic precincts there was next to no interest in political talk or even political news. They were a target audience for "if it bleeds it leads." We found a significant part of the Republican precincts were very open to political talk. We were surprised to find that Rush had picked up an audience even though they had to listen to a weak and sometimes hard to pick up signal.
We came to the conclusion that the Democratic base made up mostly of working class people, were not really interested in politics. They were democrats... They in effect delegated their political decisions to the Democratic Leadership.
I think that is why democrats can do things that are counter productive for much of their base and still get away with it.
If what we found in 88 or 89 is still true, liberal leaning newscasts will never draw an audience. The right now has other choices and the left base doesn't care.
I'll bet every one Moonves talks to tells him what a brilliant idea Perky Katie Couric is. I think the ratings will fall like a wounded duck with clipped wings.
It seems to me that so many business decisions are made by people that don't think. Here in my home town the a few years back the Mead Paper Company was in trouble. It had a very profitable "Law Books on Line" division. Within hours of laws being changed the new laws would be in on line for lawyers. It was very profitable.
So the powers that be at Mead sold it to get money to invest in papermills that were losing money, because paper demand had fallen sharply. I would have expaned the computer information division and shut down excess paper mills. It seems that expand the profitable and shut down the money losers is foreign concept to many buisness men. The Mead guy told me he understood the paper industry he did not know the computer industry so he was staying with what he knew. But he did not know either industry. The paper industry he grew up in, was dying. Mead has been sold twice since then and will close in 3 or 4 years.
Today General Motors is selling its very profitable finance division to support its money losing car business.
What CBS is doing makes no sense to me. So CBS management is staying with what they know.. liberal slanted news. The fact that the market is shrinking as old democrats die and new ones don't watch never occurs to them. I think their logic is Katie will draw a female audience. Since half the news audience is female they think they can draw half the news audience (about 13 million females) while NBC and ABC split the male audience at about 7 million each.
Katie Couric is the very model of the smileing female that will knife anyone in the back to get what she wants. No man who has much experience with womem in the work place would ever let himself get near Katie. And certainly never leave his back exposed. But from what I have been told, women do not much care for the Katie Couric type either.
Years ago I was side kick on the Robert W. Morgan show in LA. As a side kick I could attack people and situations and do it very unfairly. Controversy is part of a show.. but it is not smart for hosts to be controversial. They must be trustworthy. Bob rarely took strong positions on anything .. to maintain his host popularity, he had to be fair and honest. Neither Katie or Rather understood that simple fact. Katie can not resist showing her fake smile and her real claws. It is something no anchor who wants to prevail can do.
If you want to do bias, have the reporters attack, and the anchor make an effort to defend those attacked. That can and does work.
The people running the three major networks must never have been exposed to the real world.