Posted on 08/23/2006 3:44:23 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
That tick tick tick heard in the hallways at CBS News isnt the 60 Minutes clockor Walter Cronkites pacemaker. Its the Countdown to Katie, suspenseful buildup to the monumental moment on Tuesday, Sept. 5, when Katie Couric takes over the CBS Evening News.
And what are people saying? What are they talking about?
Theyre wondering if shes going to wear slacks. Theyre asking if her legs are going to show. Theyre even debating whether the anchor desk will be made of plexiglass so that we can all play peekaboo through it. Nobody asked those kinds of questions when Brokaw started doing Nightly News, says Steve Friedman, the über producer who reinvented the Today show and now runs morning television for CBS News. Nobody asked what Charlie Gibson was going to wear when he took over the Peter Jennings show on ABC.
And lest one think this is a clear-cut case of shameful sexism at the old-boy networks, let it be noted that women are making much of the catty chatter (the old grump of a hack TV critic who fixated on her legs was of the female, not male, persuasion). Theres so much emphasis on appearance, youd almost think Katie had been recruited from amongst the bouncy babes at the Playboy mansion. Are people forgetting what she proved in all those years at Today? That shes bright, quick, assertive, intelligent and hugely personable? And not easily intimidated?
Its 22 minutes of reading news; how hard can it be? scoffs a producer at another network. Whats 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. To Katies benefit, even though Gibson and Williams both run first-rate newscasts, neither has exactly lit a raging bonfire in Nielsens computer. KatieI mean, Couricwill be the one clear distinctive choice.
Neither Gibson nor Williams looms as large as did Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings or David Brinkley. In time, they might. But the playing field as the race begins is remarkably even. And for better or worse, Katies the one whom the paparazzi will be waiting to spot on her way back from lunch. Shes instantly the biggest star among the three network anchors.
Friedman says he drops by on Fridays to see how the new set is coming along. Its being finished up this week, he says, but he doesnt exactly paint a vivid mind-picture of how it will look. Is Katie going to be perched on a chair behind a big wooden credenza as Rather was? I would doubt very much that she would spend every minute of every broadcast sitting behind a desk, says Friedman, sounding as though he knows more than hes telling.
One of the genuinely curious facts about Couric, for all the gibes she endures about being Rebecca of Sunnybrook News, is that she is notorious within the business for having high negative Qs. Her Q ratings are high, but her negative Qs are whoppers, a seeming contradiction that baffles many an old pro.
Friedman dismisses the so-called negative Qs. If Couric has them, he says, they didnt keep her from beating Qs-through-the-roof Diane Sawyer on every day of every week they went up against each other in the morning. They didnt keep her from clobbering Harry Smith and his harem on CBS either.
And Couric is already an old hand at handing Gibson his hat. So no matter what she wears, no matter whether she sits behind a desk or lounges on a chaise, no matter how perky or cute or lovely-legged Couric is alleged to be, from here it looks like Gibson and Williams have a lot more to worry about than she does. Tick tick tickety tick tick
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"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 scoreswhich 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 Sawyers negative Q of twenty-two (or Dan Rathers twenty-three). But Courics negative Q had gone up twenty per cent in the previous four years, while Sawyers rose half as quickly. It is not unusual for a personalitys negative Q to rise as he or she becomes more familiar, but Courics rise was unusually rapid. At the same time, ABCs research also showed that Courics 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!
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.
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!
But ..but...but...she's supposed to be perky!
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.
Who's Katie Couric??? Does CBS still have an evening news show?? :)
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..... :^)
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
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.
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".
EEK! There's a mouse in the studio.
Nobody wanted to see Brokaw's legs.
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