MYTH: CBS Evening News with Katie Couric’s ratings have greatly improved

TV by the Numbers ^ | February 08 2009 | Robert Seidman

[redk]

I don’t follow the television news game that much. I almost never watch television news, broadcast or cable. But I eyeball the numbers. I keep reading about how the ratings are so much better these days for the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. First I read Tom Shales slobbering all over Ms. Couric in the Washington Post, and then today I even saw our friends at TV Newser write a piece about Couric that mentioned ratings and said, But recently the ratings have greatly improved.

I scratched my head and thought, “huh? Really? WTF!?” because my basic regular eyeballing of the broadcast news standings is that CBS is still mired in last place and that from that basic scanning things didn’t seem a whole lot different than they ever were.

I understand about Couric being a media darling. A lot of people loved her treatment of Sarah Palin, and hey, I too think she’s much cuter than Brian Williams. But it seems like Williams is the one who should be getting all the love.

Broadcast news ratings got some recent boost from the election and inaugural week, and in the first week post-inauguration has held some of it. But I wondered how that compared with the same period one year ago. So I looked it up . It’s only the smallest of slices to examine, but I think no matter how you examine it, there’s not really any case for saying Couric’s ratings have greatly improved.

[redk]

Not suprising, they also want everyone to think the whole world loves Tina Fey and it simply isn't true.

[originalbuckeye]

I call Barbra Streisand on this. Couric is annoying and Fey is not funny.

[BAW]

Katie Couric is not the center of everyone’s universe.

[DoughtyOne]

...alternate universe perhaps...

[lonestar]

Who is Katie Couric?

[redk]

Agreed, Couric has always bugged the crap out of me. As for Fey it's no coincidence that SNL went on an inexorable decline when she became head writer.

[DieHard the Hunter]

We don’t receive Katie Couric here in New Zealand. (Maybe that’s another good reason I live here). I don’t even know what a Katie Couric looks like — I assume it’s a “she?”

I wouldn’t know Katie Couric if she jumped up butt naked and bit me on my fat arse.

She sounds dreadful!

[GVnana]

Ha! Good find!

[Brad’s Gramma]

She'll look like this in a few years, I guess...




As Promised!!!....

[Rome2000]

They pay that animal like 15 million a year to read a teleprompter.

They could use that money to pay 365 different crack whores $41,000 each to read a teleprompter for a half hour instead.

Now thats ratings!

[JRandomFreeper]

What's a television?

/johnny

[lonestar]

Is she on TV?

[Henchster]

All you need to know about network news ratings is that Katie Colon is in @$$ place, and going nowhere but down the shoot.

[o_zarkman44]

OOOOOh Complete BS improved their ratings from 3 to 4 people.
Just like Olberman on the NBC super bowl pre game helped their network news.

Network news barf factor ratings did definitely improve.

[gigster]

She kind of resembles a Tasmanian Devil,but without the endearing personality.

[Atchafalaya]

I watched 60 min. today because of the Sullenberger and crew interview; first time I’ve watched the show in 20 years at least.
A.

[truthguy]

We don’t receive Katie Couric here in New Zealand.

You are better off not getting Katie Couric. But FYI she is another one of our "air-head" newsreaders who fancies herself as a "journalist". She started off on the early morning news and feature show. These are shows mostly for people who don't have jobs and don't go to work.

She wasn't terrible as long as she was interviewing other "air-heads" (hope you Kiwi's understand air-head) like movie actors and the like.

CBS News which use to be a big deal in the US then got the idea of putting her on in primetime news as the anchor. This is the slot that Walter Cronkite, considered to be a god by some in the media, use to have. But that's another story.

Anyway Couric is bombing big time as any intelligent person could have told you. CBS was trying to boost it's ratings for the news against the other broadcast networks (which are also lousy). It paid this woman a king's ransom for this job. The person or people who made that decision should be fired.

Anyway she is failing bit time. This is actually good news to those of us who never took her seriously to begin with. Like I said she is a major airhead. You can see some of her work on the Internet if you have a high tolerance for pain.

[preacher]

[BigSkyFreeper]

The CBS Morning Show is a distant third. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if The CBS Evening News was in a distant third also.

[hattend]

BTTT