Dan Rather "Escalates" Feud With CBS - Go Dan!

[Dinger]

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-06-12-rather-comments_N.htm?csp=34

" NEW YORK — Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather escalated a feud with the network Tuesday, saying CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves "doesn't know about news."
Moonves had said earlier Rather's remarks that CBS was "tarting" up its newscast with Katie Couric, Rather's successor, were "sexist."

The spat started Monday when Rather, speaking by phone on MSNBC's Morning Joe program with Joe Scarborough, said CBS had made the mistake of taking the evening news broadcast and "dumbing it down, tarting it up," and playing up topics such as celebrities over war coverage.

While referring to Couric as a "nice person," Rather said "the mistake was to try to bring the Today show ethos to the Evening News, and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."

Moonves, speaking at an event in New York Tuesday morning sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, called the remarks "sexist" and said he was surprised at the amount of negative coverage Couric was receiving. . . . . .



Couric started strong but has settled into a distant third in the evening news ratings race. Last month her CBS Evening News set a record for its least-watched broadcast for at least two decades, then broke it the very next week.

Later Tuesday, Rather said during an appearance on Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto program that he didn't regret making his earlier remarks, but insisted he was referring to CBS's management of the newscast, not to Couric personally. . . "

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

1. Good for Dan! If CBS wants to attract a younger audience, you hire Jon Stewart as your anchor, not

Katie Couric!

[AndyA]

2. I think CBS/Couric's ratings speak for themselves.

I think they're both getting what the deserve.

Here's to setting more new (low) record numbers! :toast:

[Supersedeas]

12. surely the penciled on lips will catch on sooner or later

[liberalla]

29. Exactly!

"I think CBS/Couric's ratings speak for themselves.
I think they're both getting what they deserve."

EXACTLY! You nailed it.

Moonves "said he was surprised at the amount of negative coverage Couric was receiving. . ." ? ? ?
Apparently, he does not watch the show!

[Warpy]

3. Rather is correct and Moonves is an ass

and no matter what the illiterate right says, saying a program was "tarted up" is not sexist, any more than saying it was "dumbed down," something Rather also called it.

I said from the beginning that Couric had been saddled with an impossible format for a hard news show and her dismal ratings have borne this out. Whatever genius came up with the idea of bringing a morning coffee show to a hard news hour (Moonves?), he saddled Couric with an impossible format.

The dismal lack of content isn't helping her, either.

Clearly, Moonves and whoever else is responsible for the fiasco should be fired. Couric should be given another chance with a more sensible format and some real, non tabloid reporting without the right wing editorializing.

I sincerely doubt the problem is Couric, although sexists like Moonves will undoubtedly blame her. The problem is just another corporate coup of another news department falling flat on its collective, silly face.

[peekaloo]

8. Good post. I believe the other culprit in this fiasco is one Sean McManus (sp)

former head of SPORTS programming (his dad is sports caster Jim McKay) who took over, or was handed, the news/ entertainment division.

Bad decision from the get-go. Although I'm no fan of Ms. Couric :toast: to you for being fair-minded regarding her predicament.

[spooky3]

15. well-said

[hfojvt]

25. according to Access Hollywood

NBC gave twice as much news time to Paris Hilton as CBS did.

I am not sure the content is all that much different than any other of the big 3. The Friday segment is not that much different than Charles Kuralt's "On the Road" which I always thought was kinda neat. Maybe this new guy isn't as good a storyteller.

[texpatriot2004]

4. K & R nm

[KurtNYC]

5. (cue Nicholson): "You can't handle the truth!"

CBS hired Bryant Gumbel when he left the Today Show -- a smart move?
CBS lost over $500million by overbidding for baseball (mid-1990s)
now CBS hired Couric.

Moonves is trying to counter-attack Rather to keep the focus off of the message: CBS has become a money pit.

[MrSlayer]

6. Hard to argue with Rather on this.

The news is a joke.

[hatrack]

7. "He was surprised by the amount of negative coverage"? Uh, the show SUCKS.

Is this Les Moonvess or Les Nesmith?

:eyes:

[Canuckistanian]

23. Don't be dissing Les Nessman

He was a multiple nominee for the Buckeye News Hawk and Silver Sow awards.

How many Silver Sows did Moonves win?

I rest my case.

[tanyev]

9. Moonves didn't seem to have any problem with putting Katie in a short skirt

and letting her sit on top of the freaking news desk. He needs to STFU up about who is sexist.

[pacalo]

24. Yikes...

[Hubert Flottz]

10. She needs to go back to the toady show and beg for her job back.

I quit watching CBS news when Dan left and I'd watched it for a lifetime! I can get news like they have now in the funny papers!

EDIT...The bosses at CBS have turned the entire network into the TOADY SHOW!

[endarkenment]

18. And don't you dare change the spelling!

From now on it is indeed the TOADY SHOW I will be not watching every morning.

[Bitwit1234]

11. Shame CBS

took their email response off. I can't find it anywhere.

[UTUSN]

13. Dan should be spending every living moment validating the National Guard story

[DaveT]

14. Are ABC and NBC so much better?

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2006/narrative_networktv_audience.asp?cat=3&media=5

This is from "The State of the News Media 2006" by the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Between November 2004 and November 2005, ratings for the nightly news fell 6% and share fell 3%. That is an acceleration of the pace of decline in recent years. It translates into overall viewership on the three commercial nightly newscasts of 27 million viewers, or a decline of some 1.8 million viewers from November 2004. From the start of CNN in 1980, nightly news viewership for the Big Three networks has fallen by some 25 million, or 48%.

When you figure in population growth over the last generation, the networks now have less than half the audience that they had a generation ago. CBS did not deny that they hired Curic and changed the format of the news with the idea of reversing that long term decline. That experiment appears to have failed -- but, hey, I don't have a dog in the fight between Disney, GE and Sumner Redstone.

Of course, the "golden age" of network news with Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith and the Huntley Brinkley Report seems like a democratic (with a small d) paradise compared to the consciously right wing slant in the national network news that was triggered by the success of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel. But like all "Good Old Days" thinking, there are some serious flaws in that rose colored picture of the past.

It is true that the consensus thinking that controlled editorial decisions before the Reagan Era did not favor one party over the other. But do not fool yourself about what that "Bi-Partisan" concensus meant to the country. We remember Ed Murrow going after Joe McCarthy and Walter Cronkite turning on the Vietnam War after Tet -- but both of those were self conscious steps AWAY from a previous orthodoxy that all three networks expounded in the same lockstep fashion that we saw the MSM employ to help Bush invade Iraq.

The network "News" has always been a top-down corporate mechanism. The propaganda message has switched from the Bi-Partisan Cold War concensus which accepted the New Deal as an accoplished fact to the new wingnut madness that you see today. The modern conservative "movement" has been highly animated by its frustration that those old elites had accepted the New Deal -- and they have now, with the disgraced dismissal of Dan Rather from CBS and the ascension of the quintessential Twinky to his old Anchorship, solidified their control of the new top-down concensus.

Luckily, the audience for these dinosaur "shows" is melting away. Good riddance says I.

[monmouth]

16. Katie might do well replacing Bob Barker on the Price Is Right.. Perky..n/t

[Peace Patriot]

17. We should take a cue from the Chavistas and pull their goddamned licenses to

to abuse our PUBLIC airwaves with 24/7 fascist crap, and give the licenses to new, independent, SMALL, non-monopolistic, pro-democracy REAL news organizations, who will watchdog our government, like the Fourth Estate is supposed to, and provide a true spectrum of American political opinion, and to independent, truly creative entertainment producers, who reflect a broader spectrum of American experience and storytelling than Corporate Hollywood's glitzoid canned goods and latest "blond in peril" dick show.

Really, we can pull their licenses. It is our right. (But first we have to restore transparent vote counting.)

[lpbk2713]

19. Moonves needs to cut his losses and can Couric.

But he doesn't want to admit to a multi-million dollar fuggup because that would cause a lot of heads at CBS to roll. Couric would do well on a glossy Entertainment Tonight type show. But as a real journalist? Come on!!

[DemReadingDU]

20. evening kick

[WiseButAngrySara]

21. I love Rathers and miss his perspective. I will NEVER

watch dumbing it down Couric. Her salary is so unjustified.

[WiseButAngrySara]

22. KNR for Rathers! ....n/t

[RiverStone]

26. Who should replace Katie?

Not that I'm a fan of the MSM anyway...but Katie's days are numbered.

How about Anderson Cooper from CNN?

[NJCher]

28. Let's get an actor playing a journalist

How about David Straithaim playing Edward R. Murrow?



The republicans have actors play presidents so the next logical step is to get actors to play journalists, yes? Almost everything's a fake in this country, so why not just go all-out and admit it and have actors play journalists. Couldn't be any worse than it already is.



Cher

[JI7]

27. this is like the Republican accusation that Democrats hate the troops

trying to turn criticism of Bush policies into attacks on troops.

and CBS here is trying to make it seem like Dan Rather is personally attacking Couric when it's CBS he is criticizing. they hired Couric because they wanted it to be like the morning shows.