Posted on 10/27/2006 1:23:01 PM PDT by abb
When it comes to Katie Couric, CBS's official line is "While CBS News ratings are up, NBC and ABC ratings are down." Technically, when CBS spokesman Gil Schwartz points out the numbers – CBS is up 8 percent from this time last year, with 7.4 million viewers, while NBC is down 8 percent (to 8.5m) and ABC down 5 percent (to 7.9m) – he's right. But that still leaves Couric dragging in third place, and more than a few CBS insiders have declared the $45 million investment in the former Today show host a flop.
But what about the investment in PR chief Schwartz (aka Fortune columnist Stanley Bing)? Schwartz – who's held his job in one form or another since 1994 and reports directly to Les Moonves – continues to draw ire from industry insiders. It was only Monday night, at Broadcasting & Cable's Hall of Fame Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, that many a mouth were wagging about his current Katie Couric tragedy. And this time, it wasn't just about the slimmed down photo than ran in the CBS promotions magazine Schwartz oversees.
Nobody can quite figure out how Gil has managed to bungle Katie Couric's rep so badly. While the numbers may do the talking, Schwartz should be doing the spinning — and NBC's Jeff Zucker has given him the perfect platform. The GE-mandated 700 job cuts at NBC Universal is, one would think, the perfect platform to cast the network TV spotlight entirely on the Peacock's problems. But Gil hasn't managed to do much of that, evidenced by the continued hounding of Couric. On the attack: USA Today's Peter Johnson, Matt Drudge, the Los Angeles Times, Broadcasting & Cable's Andrew Tyndall, the New York Times, Newday's Verne Gay, and the New York Post's Page Six all raking Katie over the ratings coals. NBC's press coverage, meanwhile, remains plenty anti-Zucker, but sometimes apologistic.
And it's not just the random hacks in the TV news business kivetching: We hear Katie herself is fuming over Schwartz's inabilities to put the spin in her favor. Not one to befriend a network's PR team, Katie already has Freud PR chief powerhouse Matt Hiltzik on her roster. And (indirectly) taking Katie's side is former CBS head Andrew Heyward. Speaking to The Strategist's John Elsasser:
In the frenzy that erupted, you, along with many of your colleagues at CBS, found yourself in the media’s crosshairs. How did you deal with being part of this media onslaught? What can PR professionals learn from your experiences?
Heyward: First of all, I think we handled the aftermath poorly and exacerbated the problem. There are lots of lessons there for PR professionals. In retrospect, they seem so obvious: Be quick to recognize not only that there is a problem but also the magnitude of the problem; be quick to address it, not only with the outside world but also with your own colleagues; and be open-minded about what your critics are saying. At the beginning, it might have been a commendable instinct to stand by your colleagues, [but] loyalty . . . should have been balanced more effectively and quickly with the responsibility to get to the bottom of the criticism and find out what had really happened and whether we had, in fact, fallen short in our reporting — which we had. That took way too long, and that was partly because we were too busy fending off attacks and had placed too much faith in colleagues based on their track records as opposed to the evidence that was before us.
It was only 2004 when Gil's head was rumored to be on the chopping block after his continued follies advising Heyward on how to handle the Dan Rather fall out. And you know what happened there. Unfortunate for CBS and Katie Couric, it sounds like Les Moonves doesn't know what's happening here. "I like Gil, he's a nice guy," a senior level CBS insider tells us. "But he's a disaster."
Ping
They've picked out their first blood sacrifice for this train wreck...
"We sucked so hard last year, that our slightly lower velocity suck this year practically blows."
Obviously, these people are specialists in spin.
Regards, Ivan
I suspect they are becoming aware of this...
This stuff always brings a smile to my heart.
I predict Soledad O'Brien of CNN, the next CBS anchor.
She made her fatal mistake when she asked the audience to suggest a closing. Walter Cronkite would never had done that, nor Dan Rather. It just labeled her as 'tacky', seeking approval, rather than commanding earned attention.
LOL
Meanwhile, the show must go on. And what will that show be? The same old leftist America bashing crap. They can devour their own all they want, replacing them with the same old same old isn't going to change anything.
Lots of ghosts in the MSM news rooms. More to come ....
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