Imus: 'Unwatchable' Couric Can't Do 'Big Boy' Evening News

NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

[governsleastgovernsbest]

After his comments this morning, if Don Imus ever gets invited to a party on the terrace of Katie Couric's midtown apartment overlooking Central Park, he would be well advised not to get too close to the ledge.

Chatting with Imus on MSNBC at 8:45 ET this morning about the travails of the CBS Evening News and the advent of Rick Kaplan as executive producer, media maven Howard Kurtz observed: "I don't know if this is attributable to Rick, but it seems to me that in the last week the show has a little bit of a harder edge, a little bit of a faster pace."

That set Imus off on an anti-Couric tirade: "It's unwatchable. And it's unwatchable because she's unwatchable. I'm sure she's a nice lady, but I mean . . ."

View video here.

KURTZ: "She certainly wasn't deemed to be unwatchable when she was #1 at the "Today" show for over ten years."

IMUS: "That's a completely different deal. Doing little stupid chit-chat stuff on an idiotic morning show on NBC has nothing to do with sitting down and doing the news. That's big-boy television."

KURTZ: "Katie Couric, like Charlie Gibson during all the years when he was on 'Good Morning America,' also interviewed presidential candidates, heads of state and all that as well as cooking and . . . "

IMUS: "This is pathetic. This is unbelievable."

A bit later, Kurtz passed along a bit of condescension toward Middle America from Rick Kaplan: "He told me . . . he thinks that there is a chunk of the audience that, for whatever reason, is not comfortable getting their news from a woman at 6:30 and this is one of the attitudes they have to change."

The MSM: bringing cultural enlightenment to the benighted reaches of flyover America. Kaplan might want to start in Imus' neck of the woods.

Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net

[babaloo]

IIRC she is doing really badly in Los Angeles. So much for us dipwads in the Midwest being the problem theory.

[hunter112]

Pot, meet kettle. One loser dissing another loser. I cannot stand listening to Anus in the Morning.

[oh8eleven]

...is not comfortable getting their news from a woman at 6:30 and this is one of the attitudes they have to change.
Classic liberal attitude - we have to change to meet their expectations. FU

[oprahstheantichrist]

"'....there is a chunk of the audience that, for whatever reason, is not comfortable getting their news from...' an IDIOT at 6:30."

Hey she's not an idiot, she's evil! Big difference you know!

[capydick]

he thinks that there is a chunk of the audience that, for whatever reason, is not comfortable getting their news from a woman at 6:30 and this is one of the attitudes they have to change."

How typical. Kaplan knows whats best for America, it's just that the rest of the country has not caught up to his wisdom. Never mind the fact that the delivery of the content stinks, and, the chunk of the audience has made up their mind about perky and SeeBS.

[leadpenny]

I still can't believe that he died eight years ago and Imus is still breathing.

I can't believe any self respecting dixie yooper would watch anything else.

[Kenny Bunk]

IIRC she is doing really badly in Los Angeles

Of course. Half the bloody population doesn't watch English-language TV!

[leadpenny]

It's the "Daily Show" for adults.

[Lijahsbubbe]

Nah. Imus is every bit as unwatchable as Couric.

No kidding. He has nerve. He looks like someone from a Freddie Krueger movie.

[Heman11]

Kurtz passed along a bit of condescension toward Middle America from Rick Kaplan: "He told me . . . he thinks that there is a chunk of the audience that, for whatever reason, is not comfortable getting their news from a woman at 6:30 and this is one of the attitudes they have to change."

The problem with "middle America" isn't that we have a hard time taking our news from a woman; It's the fact that the news coming from these MSM outlets, of which CBS is definitely one of, is decidedly slanted from the left. These dinos are lucky that Fox doesn't put up a nightly 6:30 show to compete with them. They would be destroyed. If they want to fix it, all they have to do is start reporting the news, not the views.

[leadpenny]

It may be "unwatchable," but I know you can't resist watching.

[cubstoseries07]

I get more news from Caillou or Barney and Friends than I do from the See BS evening news.

[fishtank]

Karl Childers from "Slingblade" on Imus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee1_PK039Nk

[twigs]

I turned over to Imus this morning while Bennett was stuck on a monument in GA and heard this whole thing. I thought it was hilarious. Someone said that Rick Kaplan had told him that the American public was not ready for a woman anchor and they (CBS) were going to have to change that. I think that Americans are not ready for a poor female anchor. And I think that women have to be better than their male counterparts to be successful, probably. But I think that the right female anchor, maybe because they WOULD have to be better than Brian Williams, would be very successful. People ask the same thing about a woman president. Ask conservatives if they would like to see an American Maggie Thatcher, then we would have an immediate front-runner for republican presidential candidate. It depends on WHO is the anchor. Katie isn't going to make it...

[roses of sharon]

Sick.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

LOL. Don done in by the double-negative ;-)

[leadpenny]

Looks isn't everything. If you missed Rob "Roberto Gonzales" Bartlett singing "I did it my way" this morning, you missed some good television.

[reagan_fanatic]

A crevice-faced sideshow freak in a cowboy hat disses a liberal marxist harpie anchor who's busy dragging CBS's ratings and prestige to the bottom of the ocean.

Yawn. I'm going to get another donut.

[Dixie Yooper]

I can't believe any self respecting dixie yooper would watch anything else

If Imus is all I'm allowed to watch, I'll never open my eyes again!

[leadpenny]

If Imus were the only person on "Imus in the Morning" I wouldn't watch either. And I'm the self proclaimed #1 Imus fan on FreeRepublic. What yoopers don't understand is that it's not about Imus. BTW, what's a yooper?