Katie Couric's First Week: Third Place On Friday

[RamboLiberal]

Ok, now I think it's may be fair for DU'ers and KO to beat up on Katie. Maybe she should have done a Dan Rather on the Tennis!

FLASH--World News and Nightly News beat Katie on Friday, a tipster says...

> Update: 9:19am: "Katie crashes," an e-mailer says. "Friday overnights show CBS back to pre-Katie ratings..."

Update: 9:24am: She averaged a 4.9 in metered market households on Friday, Drudge says, putting her in third place for the day...

> Update: 10:02am: "In all the East Coast and central time zones, the Evening News was preceded by tennis," an e-mailer says. "That hurt her lead-in by a lot, so any number she DID have was tune-in, not people already watching CBS..."

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/

[thereismore]

1. What is it with this chick? Why does everybody care? Why did

Keith Olbermann have a similar report on Katie Kouric last week? Why does she matter? Is she some kind of a RW hack that deserves bad karma? Please explain if you know.

[warrens]

2. People just question paying $15 million for PERKY nt

[RamboLiberal]

3. And I question giving Limpballs a forum the first week

plus her perky interview with Bush.

[thereismore]

11. Was it bad? Gloating pig? I didn't see it. nt

[liberalnurse]

7. She is not "Perky" because

she is Menopausal!!!!!!!!!! Have you ever seen a " Perky Chrone" ????:nopity:

[Justitia]

4. "Navy SEALS rawwwkkk!" -eom

[AX10]

5. What did CBS expect?

[partylessinOhio]

6. Will CBS dump Katie?

Will they cut her salary?

This is such good news and I cannot wait for her ratings to keep falling lower. She pulled off a 15 million dollar con job!

[FormerDittoHead]

8. I, for one LIKE her, HOWEVER, I'm not watching because it's not NEWS

NOW I know why we had that story from when Katie did her "touchy-feely" tour about how many people actually wanted the news to be an hour..

It's because, at the rate Katie goes, it would take an hour to go through the news to cover the number of stories that we're used to seeing!

Couric has been trying to give the news more TEXTURE and FEELING. Guess what. PEOPLE DON'T WANT THAT.

Sure, I thought the story about the clicking blind boy was touching, Katie loved it too! (did anyone see the send-up that Saturday Night Live did on that this week?) BUT, while the minutes clicked away (sorry), I couldn't help but think of the other stories which were going unreported.

THE NIGHTLY NEWS IS *NOT* THE CBS SUNDAY MORNING SHOW! That nightly "opinion" piece is a perfect example! "Count-Counterpoint" WORKED on 60 Minutes (whatever happened to Nicholas Von Hoffman? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Von_Hoffman ) but 60 Minutes is not a NEWS show, it's a news MAGAZINE.

I know that Couric must be thinking, if they're paying for me, then I guess they want to see ME. Guess what? We want to see the news!

If you gave me the keys to the newroom, I'd increase the number of stories by 2x, CUT the commentary and trim the nightly "panda stories" to 20 seconds and still picture(s)...

[RamboLiberal]

9. Couric's newscast short on news - Hollywood Reporter

It took a few nights, but the shape of CBS' evening news with Katie Couric at the helm is coming into focus.

More and more, it looks as if Couric has not so much left NBC's "Today" but instead brought it with her. True, there are no celebrity interviews, shots of people holding up signs or weatherman-anchor banter -- at least, not yet -- but there is a new format, attitude and array of features that have more in common with morning news shows than the traditional evening shows.

The old evening news formats were fairly straightforward. You lead with the biggest story of the day, and then you follow with other news stories, plus an occasional feature or investigative piece.

"CBS Evening News With Katie Couric," just like "Today," also leads with the big story. What comes after that, though, are interviews, a "FreeSpeech" feature segment, short featurettes under the "Snapshot" banner and then a longer feature story, often with an emotional tug. You can't say this newscast ignores news, but it dilutes it considerably with other ingredients, like those bottles of fruit juice that, upon careful inspection, say "10% juice" in small print on the label.

Couric is the first woman to solo as an evening news anchor, but, more significantly, she is the first person to have that job who is regarded more as a celebrity than as a journalist. That, more than anything, explains the preoccupation with what she wears and how she accessorizes. (For those keeping score, her legs received so much attention Tuesday -- all of it favorable, by the way -- that she switched to longer skirts Wednesday and Thursday.)

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=televisionNews&storyID=2006-09-11T001747Z_01_N10256925_RTRIDST_0_TELEVISION-TELEVISION-COURIC-DC.XML

[npincus]

10. the new format SUCKS... I want NEWS in my news