Will Katie Have Legs? (Does Couric Rate Lower In Q Scores Than A Can of Budweiser?)

tvweek ^ | Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 | 'Tom Shales'

[fight_truth_decay]

Q Scores and Brands

"All of industry (including goods and humans) pays close attention to the survey research of a Long Island firm called Marketing Evaluations; twice a year, the firm calculates “Q scores”—which measure the familiarity and appeal of news and entertainment figures (also referenced as TVQ, not to be confused with Neilson). In the summer of 2004, Couric had a negative Q of twenty-four, which was not so different from Sawyer’s negative Q of twenty-two (or Dan Rather’s twenty-three). But Couric’s negative Q had gone up twenty per cent in the previous four years, while Sawyer’s rose half as quickly. It is not unusual for a personality’s negative Q to rise as he or she becomes more familiar, but Couric’s rise was unusually rapid. At the same time, ABC’s research also showed that Couric’s appeal was waning," writes KEN AULETTA of the New Yorker Magazine.

“The closer you get to the personal life of the consumer, the better off you will be. Marketing strategies that mesh with consumers' everyday lives work better,” says Adbusters' Lasn. “But the overall mood is set by the large multi-million-dollar campaigns, and they just won't work anymore.”

Value and quality ratings have slipped in Q Scores", writes Betsy Spethmann Senior Editor for Promo Magazine.
Brands like Sprint, Wal-Mart, Sears, America Online, and Budweiser scored highest in Q scores. What's crucial is matching brand promises to consumer values, says Brand Keys president Robert Passikoff. “Most corporations have no clue how to measure customer values, so their communication processes have major faults,” he says. “Protests are a manifestation that people feel brands aren't resonating with their [own] values.”

Not sure what top score was achieved by Bud, although reported scoring in the highest Q's; but JELL-O rated 53. Couric -24 to JELL-O's 53? Now, if "laggards" Gibson and Williams were to stand next to a bowl of High Q Scoring JELL-O.......just a little silly research folks!

[TomGuy]

“It’s 22 minutes of reading news; how hard can it be?” scoffs a producer at another network.

Ouch!

What’s hard, of course, is getting the audience at home to prefer the way you read the 22 minutes of news to the way Charlie Gibson at ABC and Brian Williams at NBC do it.

I haven't watched the network news in over 3 years, and I haven't missed a thing. They - Couric, Gibson, Williams - delude themselves with their own self-importance, if they think people have to watch them to know what's going on in the world.

Thanks to cable news and the Internet, we don't really need them to filter and interpret the news for us any more. Amazingly, we can get the unfiltered raw news and interpret it for ourselves.

[Astronaut]

Agreed. Who cares who CBS pays to read the telepromter? I haven't watched a network newscast in more than 15 years. I get my news without a liberal bias from several internet sites. The evening newscast is a quaint anachronism from a bygone era. The internet generation has no use for it.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

And what are people saying?

They're too busy yawning to say much of anything. Old media and it's TV news anchors are becoming less relevant with every passing second. That isn't going to change because of one middle-aged dumpy lady with strange looking eyes.

[Enchante]

"There’s so much emphasis on appearance, you’d almost think Katie had been recruited from amongst the bouncy babes at the Playboy mansion"

I'm quite sure that if they'd picked their new anchor from among the ranks of the Playboy bunnies they'd get both a much better journalist and someone far more pleasing to the eyes. Come to think of it, why doesn't one of the MSM networks try that? It surely couldn't be worse than their usual fare.......

[Dahoser]

To Katie’s benefit, even though Gibson and Williams both run first-rate newscasts, neither has exactly lit a raging bonfire in Nielsen’s computer. Katie—I mean, Couric—will be the one clear distinctive choice.

Why is that, Shales? Is it her legs? Her hair? Why is she the one clear distinctive choice among the three except that she's the woman? Wasn't it you just one paragraph before intoning there was such an emphasis on appearance over substance? You phony Clymer!

[nevergore]

But ..but...but...she's supposed to be perky!

[MizSterious]

No kidding. Only time I watch is when I'm watching for weather alerts--and even then, I don't watch, I just listen for the alerts. Whether Katie wears slacks or sack-cloth, or whether she even shows up for work at all--who cares.

[hatfieldmccoy]

Who's Katie Couric??? Does CBS still have an evening news show?? :)

[operation clinton cleanup]

More importantly, will she go sleeveless and flex her biceps?

[martin_fierro]

They're taking bets over here that Couric won't make it to next April.

[Enchante]

I've barely glanced at a "big 3" newscast in 20 years. I was fed up with them in the '80s, with how they constantly lied and distorted everything about Ronald Reagan's two terms. fwiw, I wasn't even notably conservative then, just firmly "independent" of both major parties, but I could recognize lying propaganda even then..... :^)

[tje]

I think Katie will do well. It's not like she's got any competition and she's targeting the 'Entertainment Tonight'/'Oprah Winfrey'/'The View' audience. People who are seriously into news no longer look to the networks. This is all for Nielson stats, truth and facts be damned.

I hope I'm wrong.. but this is just a continuation of network news down the drain...

[Brad from Tennessee]

I haven't watched network news since 1980 when I was able to get cable and CNN. In those days, CNN was the most unbiased TV news programing. It changed over the years as CNN hired people from the alphabet networks and Ted Turner became an internationalist. The advent of Katie Couric simply shows that the line has completely been erased at CBS between news and entertainment. This began with 60 Minutes which has always been docu-tainmnet.

[maine-iac7]

They're too busy yawning to say much of anything. Old media and it's TV news anchors are becoming less relevant with every passing second. That isn't going to change because of one middle-aged dumpy lady with strange looking eyes.

Aww, darn. you went and stole my thoughts.

the article says: ... to the monumental moment on Tuesday, Sept. 5, when Katie Couric takes over the “CBS Evening News.”

"monumental"? - not even a tiny squiggle on any scale. But I still have the suspicion she has been off having 'monumental' nips and tucks, ala Gretta, before she faces the cameras - maybe she's going to read by candlelight to help hide those mid-age wrinkles. A middle aged woman is not perky - anywhere. (I'm a great grandma, so I can make those assertions. ;o) ...)

... will be the one clear distinctive choice.

in whose delusional pipe dreams? The writer seems to have a 'thing' for Katie - and/or the liberal press - that blinds him/her to reality.

I wont even have enough curiosity to watch her debut........I'm already bored silly on the subject of the perky, tho' wrinkled lady...no boost in ratings from here

[Ghengis]

I haven't watched the network news in over 3 years, and I haven't missed a thing...

I didn't watch the evening news with any regularity since David Brinkley and John Chancellor gave up their co-anchoring in 1979. IMO, they the last news anchors worthy of attention until Brit Hume.

[capt. norm]

One by one, their audience is politely and quietly making its way to the exit.

The "journalists" spend all their years in the newsroom, climbing to the top of the "heap", only to realize that the public is starting to regard it as a "garbage heap".

[billhilly]

EEK! There's a mouse in the studio.

[andyandval]

[mhx]

Nobody asked those kinds of questions when Brokaw started doing ‘Nightly News,’” says Steve Friedman

Nobody wanted to see Brokaw's legs.