Posted on 10/30/2006 9:27:53 AM PST by abb
The audience-ratings honeymoon for Katie Couric is over - at least on the national level.
Now the hard part of her marriage to CBS News begins.
Following smashing audience success for its debut in early September (Nielsen figures ranged from 10 million to 13 million viewers nightly), the CBS Evening News has fallen back into third place behind NBC and ABC.
The half-hour is averaging around 7.4 million viewers nightly. NBC's average is 8.8 million and ABC shows 8 million.
On the positive side, the CBS Evening News is drawing 400,000 more viewers (a 6 percent increase) than the Bob Schieffer-anchored show of a year ago.
And the demographics in the important 18-54 category also have slightly improved.
Still, the second-guessing has started.
Did the network make a mistake by moving a woman, particularly Couric, into the male-dominated world of evening-news anchoring?
Frankly, it's too soon to know.
Did you really expect Couric's initial high audience numbers to hold?
I didn't.
For viewers, newscasts are no different than entertainment shows.
When a program featuring a widely known personality hits the schedule, the curiosity factor takes over.
Then it's back to viewing as usual.
The fact that Couric is anchoring a newscast is not necessarily a reason for diehard Brian Williams' fans to shift from NBC.
The success or failure of Couric will be determined after a year. If by next October the news ratings and sponsor interest are below the current levels, CBS and Couric will have major problems. The Couric era can then be deemed a failure.
The network reportedly spent more than $13 million promoting Couric's move from NBC to the CBS Evening News - an amount that could have been used much more resourcefully.
This barrage of pre-promotion, which led to an overload of media coverage, set up Couric for a quick ratings fall.
Couric was hired as a news anchor. She wasn't going to change things in Iraq or solve the illegal immigration problem. CBS built expectations far too high.
Still, the newscast has legitimate problems.
A major flaw is the much-maligned - and deservedly so - Free Speech segment.
This tiresome gimmick, more appropriate for a cable news hour, doesn't belong in a short, 22-minute network newscast, which attempts - often feebly - to cover the world between commercial breaks.
Also, Couric too often seems personally distraught by the nasty news of the day.
Who can blame her?
The world's in a nasty mess and many viewers share Couric's concern.
But Williams and ABC's Charles Gibson have more of a straight-on, that's-the-way-it-is persona when delivering the headlines.
Couric is not a weeper. But too often she seems personally impacted by the terrible news of the day,
That worked on Today.
But is it an asset on a nightly news show?
Couric is an intelligent newsperson and an excellent interviewer.
But as the months roll by, will her compassion be a liability?
Meanwhile, CBS News President Sean McManus is trying to dissect the reasons for the gradual decline of Couric's initial high ratings.
He told USA Today that the third-place positions of local news on CBS stations around the country was one reason for the drop-off.
McManus could not use Denver's CBS 4 as an example.
October Nielsen figures show the weeknight CBS Evening News (5:30 p.m.) has a respectable 12 share – second place behind the NBC Evening News (16 share) on 9News.
That's a larger audience than the CBS newscast registered on CBS 4 in recent years with Dan Rather and Schieffer.
ABC's World News on Denver's 7 ranks much lower than the national average, showing an 8 share.
(An audience share is a percentage of the more than 1.4 million Denver-area TV households watching television and tuned into a particular program.)
Actually, the October ratings show there's not much local dial- twisting between the 5 and 6 p.m. news hours.
9News' local 5 p.m. half-hour registers a 16 share while CBS 4 shows a 13 share. 7News has a 7 audience share.
The November sweeps begin Thursday, meaning more emphasis will be placed on local news ratings.
Ping
more...
http://people.aol.com/people/article/0,26334,1552114,00.html
Katie Couric Hits Back at Critics
MONDAY OCTOBER 30, 2006 09:15AM EST
By Stephen M. Silverman
The ratings for Katie Couric's CBS Evening News may be down – but the upbeat anchor isn't.
Claiming that despite her third-place ranking among the major three network newscasts, she's "feeling great" and "having a great time," Couric tells USA Today, "We kind of ignore people who are observing everything we do and praising, criticizing or analyzing it, and we're just doing what we want."
Couric, who delivered a ratings wallop with her Sept. 5 debut, says that being in first place "was never an expectation by anyone at CBS News, and it shouldn't have been an expectation by anyone in the outside world. Viewing habits are slow to turn around."
As such, she notes, "Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will The CBS Evening News. It's a process, and being in the middle of the process, while it's sometimes challenging and can be frustrating, that's really in many ways the fun part."
She adds, "I'm hearing incredibly positive things from people who really appreciate the fact we're trying new things. Not everything is going to work. I knew that coming in."
Among the highlights was last week's interview with Michael J. Fox a day after radio host Rush Limbaugh accused the actor of not taking his Parkinson's disease medicine in order to accentuate his symptoms while shooting a commercial for a Democratic candidate favoring stem cell research.
Couric considered Thursday's interview with Fox "absolutely riveting TV, not to mention an important news story."
But because the Q&A was lengthy, the newscast's widely criticized Free Speech segment didn't run that night. Yet as Couric says, "We never said it was going to run every night. We said from the outset that we're going to try new things and we may adjust and re-evaluate, but that doesn't mean 'Oh, it's not working.' "
And the criticism? Bring it on, she says, "if it's based on facts or from reporters who take the time to watch the program. But when they make snap judgments or do a kind of lemming-like journalism, that's when I'm disappointed."
Then again, proving she's still as tough as she is upbeat, she adds, "People have to sell newspapers and take shots, but I understand that's part of their jobs.
KEEP KATIE.....I want CBS to be DESTROYED by her!!!
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-10-29-couric-ratings_x.htm
Ratings dip, but Couric stays upbeat
Posted 10/29/2006 9:19 PM ET
By Peter Johnson, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric says she's "feeling great, I'm having a great time," despite her newscast falling from first to third place in two months.
"We kind of ignore people who are observing everything we do and praising, criticizing or analyzing it, and we're just doing what we want," she said Friday in a rare interview since taking the anchor chair Sept. 5. "People have to sell newspapers and take shots, but I understand that's part of their jobs. I'm hearing incredibly positive things from people who really appreciate the fact we're trying new things. Not everything is going to work. I knew that coming in."
THE RACE: Which network anchor will win elections ratings?
The former NBC Today star drew more than 10 million viewers to Evening News in her first week. Since then, ratings have fallen behind NBC and ABC, though compared with last year Evening News has gained while the others are down. For the week of Oct. 16, Evening News drew 7.6 million viewers; NBC, 8.7 million; ABC, 8.5 million.
Her coming in and becoming No. 1 "was never an expectation by anyone at CBS News, and it shouldn't have been an expectation by anyone in the outside world," Couric says. "Viewing habits are slow to turn around."
Nonetheless, correspondent Byron Pitts says there's "some anger, but a good kind of anger" at CBS News. "Every discussion starts and stops with, 'How can we be No. 1?' We're like a franchise football team that went out and got a superstar and brought in some big hitters and we expected to be 8-and-0 at this point, and we're not."
Early in her tenure, Couric says she has "the luxury of being able to tinker with the format and try new things." Thursday, she talked for five minutes with actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, on his political activism and his response to criticism by radio's Rush Limbaugh. Couric calls it "absolutely riveting TV, not to mention an important news story."
The interview with Fox meant that the controversial Free Speech segment, the only one of its kind on broadcast news, did not run that night. "We never said it was going to run every night," Couric says. "We said from the outset that we're going to try new things and we may adjust and re-evaluate, but that doesn't mean 'Oh, it's not working.' "
Couric says she's open for criticism "if it's based on facts or from reporters who take the time to watch the program. But when they make snap judgments or do a kind of lemming-like journalism, that's when I'm disappointed."
Couric cited a column by Variety's Peter Bart: "He said we 'kiss off Iraq in a sentence and North Korea in a clause.' (That was) so completely unfounded."
(In response, Bart said his comment "was part of a facetious column in which I dispensed random advice to the likes of Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty and the president of North Korea. ... I did not claim to have made a precise measurement of the time allotted to Iraq. I hope I got her thinking, anyway.")
Couric said the lesson of the past two months is, "Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will The CBS Evening News. It's a process, and being in the middle of the process, while it's sometimes challenging and can be frustrating, that's really in many ways the fun part."
Wow, Katie sure uses a lot cliches in these quotes.
My experience with ratings is this: If you're getting hammered by the competition, you will often use cliches to explain the dilemma. One might as well say "blah, blah, blah. Thanks for caring!"
The CBS Evening News is a dreadful broadcast, and I'd say most execs are the network know it.
If there is one thing you can count on, its liberals eventually backstabing each other.
Couric will be on for a year no matter how bad the ratings for CBS for them to say they gave it the ol college try, and the rest of her contract will be bought out.
Another prediction I have is the uber liberal tv show with Matt Perry will be cancelled within the next couple weeks.
Another ratings disaster of liberal proportions.
Ping
They'll fire Moonves before Couric...
Knowing the libs, the more she loses the better she is. It will all be about how the mean conservatives were unfair.
Ron Popeil's Vegi-peeler Infomercial gets higher ratings that Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News and Feel-your-pain Half-Hour.
I think See BS needs to take a closer look at the numskulls that picked this loser to anchor
she is a plant for 2008 elections for hillary's run to toot her horn nationally, no doubt in my mind she will be there until 2009
Rose: Mr. Andrews... I saw the iceberg and I see it in your eyes... please, tell me the truth.
Thomas Andrews: The ship... will sink.
Rose: For certain?
Thomas Andrews: Yes, In an hour or so, all of this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Thomas Andrews: The pumps will buy you time, but minutes only. From this moment on, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder.
Ismay: But this ship can't sink!
Thomas Andrews: She is made of iron, sir. I assure you, she can. And she *will*. It is a mathematical certainty.
I doubt that an escape clause exists in this contract, unless she asks for a release. My guess is that when she has half the numbers of Dan Rather...then she will be thinking of getting out of the deal. At least she has 60 Minutes to hold onto.
The are not going to fire her because...
Doing so would make the person who hired her look bad.
Anybody they'd be willing to replace her with would be just as bad, since CBS wouldn't even consider someone who isn't a left wing propagandist.
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