Posted on 05/19/2005 7:29:34 AM PDT by pissant
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - CBS said Wednesday it will experiment with its evening newscast in the coming months as the network decides what direction to go in the post-Dan Rather era.
CBS News president Andrew Heyward said the moves would be built around what already has been done with temporary anchor Bob Schieffer, who took over at "CBS Evening News" on March 10. Schieffer has brought new life to the single-anchor format, spending time talking to the correspondents on-air and asking them questions instead of the standard stand-up reports common to the format.
Heyward offered few details about the reworking of "Evening News," though he said it probably would be built around several correspondents that could include Schieffer, who also is host of "Face the Nation" and is the network's chief Washington correspondent.
"We haven't worked that out yet," Heyward said.
Heyward said CBS News was looking beyond the anchor as the "voice of God." But don't count on "Evening News" to follow the lead of "The Early Show," which has four anchors, or the multiple anchors/multiple cities model that was the trademark of ABC's "World News Tonight" in the late 1970s and early '80s.
That was an innovation in Roone Arledge's time, but it wouldn't work today, Heyward said. He feels Schieffer's manner and style are a good fit.
"We like what we've seen so far," Heyward said. He said the spring and summer were a good time to make tweaks because of the higher amounts of sampling seen during those times.
During a briefing with reporters Wednesday announcing CBS' primetime schedule, CBS chief Leslie Moonves praised Schieffer's time at the helm and said the CBS News veteran had added "a real stability" to the network's perennial third-place evening news. Moonves said there was no time schedule on changes to "Evening News," saying Schieffer is doing a great job.
"It makes making a decision (about the evening news) really quickly not as necessary," Moonves said. He, too, offered no in-depth clues to what kind of changes CBS News had in mind.
"We're looking at all sorts of things. This is a tough nut to crack," Moonves said.
But whatever the future holds for "Evening News," it isn't likely to include "Today" show host Katie Couric. Moonves confirmed that CBS "had a discussion with Katie Couric" but that the NBC News star was locked up in a contract and wasn't likely to jump to anchor "Evening News." He added, "I think she'll be at the 'Today' show for a very, very long time."
I don't see John Roberts' name anywhere in this story; I imagine he's not a happy camper.
You know what this proves, right? It proves that they had NO PLAN for Rather's "leaving."
I think at times there are things best seen in motion. Unfortunately, the nightly news does not do this (and CBS speficially told views to search the internet if they wanted to see the Nick Berg video).
In older generations they turned to newsreels. Not to discover breaking news, but to see footage of a story that was already covered in print.
bump
The "news" of a 30 minute national broadcast boils down to about 6-8 minutes of headlines coverage, spoken updates with some footage and remote reporters.
Then they take a commercial break and get into the "Eye on America" type news-magazine pieces that could air at any date. Some are single person histories to say why the job market is rough, or how one person is struggling with health care costs, or maybe a story using canned footage from some biotech firm boasting about the lastest medical "breakthrough". The most laughable were CBS Evening News' "Reality check". Um, shouldn't these disections of the era's talking points be discussed as they are presented rather than playing "catch up"?
Take another commercial break and a few more headlines (that were hyped earlier in the broadcast). Close with something light and trivial.
Viacom may be trying to manuever their smug anchor on Comdedy Central (Jon Stewart) into the SeeBS studio.
His face was ALL OVER the place in the waning days of the 2004 election (cover of Rolling Stone and other magazines, a new book). He even was the "liberal" guest on some news talk shows.
It is a shift but as with Michael Moore, he would not have to be historically accurate. All he would have to claim is that he was being satirical if he is caught in a lie.
He's headed back to Toronto to do an oldies show on local radio.
Media Shenanigans:
http://www.attackthemessenger.com/index.html
Awright.
FGS ;^)
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