Free Republic

When it comes to Katie Couric, CBS's official line is "While CBS News ratings are up, NBC and ABC ratings are down." Technically, when CBS spokesman Gil Schwartz points out the numbers – CBS is up 8 percent from this time last year, with 7.4 million viewers, while NBC is down 8 percent (to 8.5m) and ABC down 5 percent (to 7.9m) – he's right. But that still leaves Couric dragging in third place, and more than a few CBS insiders have declared the $45 million investment in the former Today show host a flop. But what about the investment...

Over the summer, CBS News hosted 86 interns – 76 in New York, and 10 in Washington DC. About 600 college students applied this year for the program, according to Internship Program Coordinator Katie Curcio, and those selected worked 40-hour weeks at places like "The Early Show," "Evening News" and "60 Minutes." The only compensation CBS provided to the interns was a $6 daily credit for lunch in the cafeteria. Even if they found temporary accommodation in a dorm or a cheap room in an outer borough, those interns who could not commute from home had to pay at least...

CBS Evening News to Showcase Michael J. Fox Interview on Thursday Posted by Brent Baker on October 25, 2006 - 20:02. Katie Couric touted, on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, how her Thursday broadcast will feature an interview with actor Michael J. Fox. It will air just three days after conservatives denounced as misleading and distorted his TV ads, about stem cell research, against Republican Senate candidates. In a spot for Democratic Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, for instance, Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, charged in reference to the Republican incumbent: “Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that...

Conference preview: Q-and-A with Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Is the evening news more important than ever now? Oct.24, 2006 Copyright © 2006 PRSA. All rights reserved. The following interview appears in the fall issue of The Strategist. By John Elsasser One could be forgiven for thinking Andrew Heyward’s career was as carefully planned as, well, one of the evening news broadcasts he had overseen during parts of his nearly 30-year career. Heyward, former president of CBS News, however, never planned on a career in the news business. Rather, his journey into journalism evolved from a temporary post...

You know, and I know, and the guy who may be sitting next to you on the 6:24 out of Ronkonkoma knows, that TV is a hard game. It's a tough slog down a long, dark hallway with a lot of unmarked doors, any of which may lead to success or failure. But most of us can usually figure out what's working and what isn't, and most of us now know which category Katie Couric's turn at the "CBS Evening News" falls into. It isn't working. No reason to bore you with numbers, but "Evening News" has fallen to third...

60 Minutes' Steve Kroft Reports On Disappearance Of More Than $500 Million To Equip Iraqi Army (CBS) More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the U.S. had entrusted to run the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators. Iraq's former minister of finance says coalition members like the U.S. and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country.

freeSpeech: Sean Hannity - CBS News (Monday October 23rd, 2006) Sean Hannity, a radio and television host and commentator for Fox News, discusses why national security is the defining issue of our time. Video link - http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2117167n--- I was doing a search in the video section of CBS News and discovered these three gems, a profile of Sean that aired on CBS Sunday Morning and his Early Show appearances where he talked about his new books. Details and video links - (clicking on the links should open a CBS News video window then play) Sean Hannity, CBS Sunday Morning, aired...

When Katie Couric began anchoring The CBS Evening News early last month, her initial ratings were so strong — she drew more than 10 million viewers — that it appeared the former NBC Today star might buck network news tradition, catapult the third-place newscast into first place and keep it there. But in seven weeks, talk that CBS News' $15-million-a-year anchor would be crowned the instant queen of the evening news has all but evaporated. Initial viewer curiosity in Couric has worn off, a sign that popularity in the morning does not guarantee success at night. News has dropped from...

A town baseball field in Farmington, Connecticut may seem about as far away from the major leagues as you can get. But it's been witness to baseball history recently, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. The key to throwing a gyroball, says sportswriter Will Carroll, is a football-like spiral spin that's easy to learn but hard to master. Minor league pitcher Steve Palazzolo is learning to throw what some claim is the first new pitch in a generation. It's called the "gyroball." True believers claim it's almost un-hittable. "We know that a curveball curves and a slider slides and a...

TWO HEARTBEATS AWAY – Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi could wind up as the House speaker if Democrats win a majority in the upcoming election, making her second in the line of succession to the presidency. Lesley Stahl profiles Pelosi. Karen Sughrue is the producer.

Back on October 6, Katie Couric promised that the Mark Foley scandal “is not going away.” And just under two weeks later, on Thursday night, she did her part to keep it alive by leading the CBS Evening News with six minutes on it, starting with salacious descriptions of the teenage Mark Foley's alleged sexual activity with a Catholic priest. Couric offered a warning to viewers as she hyped the supposed importance of the priest's recollections: “A stunning development tonight in the congressional page scandal, and you may not want your young children to hear the story we're about to...

Grant K. HolcombOctober 17, 2006 On Monday October 9, 2006, I walked into my home to see my wife and son watching CBS Evening News just as Ms. Couric was introducing Ms. vanden Heuvel's "freeSpeech" segment. As a combat veteran I was devastated to hear such an intentional misrepresentation of the Iraq war. Because of what I heard, I was ashamed to be an American for the first time in my life. Truth, ethics, integrity, honor, professionalism, and patriotism have meaning to the vast majority of U.S. Citizens. These values are part of our nation's foundation and need to be...

COURIC: CBS 'EVENING NEWS' RATINGS DISASTER Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 NEW YORK CITY WABC 7.1 WNBC 5.3 WCBS 3.7 LOS ANGELES KABC 5.9 KNBC 3.1 KCBS 1.5 WASHINGTON, DC NBC 9.3 ABC 7.8 CBS 2.5

Gas prices are down, the stock market is at a record high and 60 percent of Americans say the economy is in good shape. So why are Republicans in so much trouble? I've been asked this in the past week by several (mostly rich) Democrats and Republicans, so I picked the brains of a number of pollsters. Kathy Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News, pointed to the finding in the CBS News/New York Times poll conducted Oct. 5 to 8, which said that despite the increase in the number of people saying the economy was in good shape, they...

Many adults in the United States believe the current federal government has not been completely forthcoming on the issue of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News. 53 per cent of respondents think the Bush administration is hiding something, and 28 per cent believe it is lying. Only 16 per cent of respondents say the government headed by U.S. president George W. Bush is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks, down five points since May 2002. On Aug. 6, 2001, a Presidential Daily Briefing titled...

NEW YORK -- It takes an anniversary, and a lot of sales, to inspire a new edition. Hillary Rodham Clinton's "It Takes a Village" is being reissued in December, with a new foreword by the senator, to mark the book's 10th year since publication. "When we published `It Takes a Village' 10 years ago, Hillary Rodham Clinton brought to the fore her long-standing concerns about how public policy affects our children — in ways both large and small," Carolyn Reidy, president of Simon & Schuster, said in a statement released Tuesday. "Though new readers continually discover this influential and important...

(CBS) The dancing partner of the woman who accuses three Duke Lacrosse players of raping her refutes a key part of her partner’s account of the alleged crime. Kim Roberts, who danced at the same party where the alleged rape took place, makes the revelation in an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley this Sunday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Roberts' answer to Bradley’s question directly contradicts a crucial statement the accuser gave to police. Bradley asks whether she, Roberts, who goes by the stage name "Nikki" when she performs, was holding onto the accuser at the beginning...

by Mark Finkelstein October 11, 2006 - 08:17 A phalanx of Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, claims the Bush administration is to blame for the N. Korean nuclear test. John McCain responds, pointing out that it was the Clinton administration's failed "agreed framework" that let Kim Jong Il merrily go about his bomb-and-missile-making ways. So how does Hannah Storm of CBS' Early Show frame the state of play? "Sen. John Kerry said that you must be trying to burnish your credentials for the nomination process, he's referring of course to your presidential aspirations. I mean, what do you say to...

The fifth week was the toughest for Katie Couric, whose viewership on the "CBS Evening News" has dropped each week since her debut the day after Labor Day. Her broadcast averaged 7.04 million viewers last week, third to NBC's "Nightly News" (8.56 million) and ABC's "World News" (7.97 million), according to Nielsen Media Research. CBS points out that the "CBS Evening News" is the only one of the three network newscasts with more viewers last week than the same week a year earlier. NBC's margin of victory last year was 2.2 million. "Where we were last week or even in...

On my own little blog, I have issued a challenge to the left. We all know the media is biased, but they feel Bush gets a pass, or so they claim. To settle the issue I have challenged any liberal to supply pro-Bush articles from the mainstream media since he first took office in 2000. I am patiently waiting to see if any post anything. Only one day so far, but no takers as of yet.