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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Katie’s 6-week report card
We’ve mulled the lack of breakout hits in prime time so far this fall, but we haven’t taken time to smell the status of season’s No. 1 Hyped Newcomer, Katie Couric.
The First Woman to Solo Anchor a Network Newscast arrived on the “CBS Evening News” on Sept. 5 and zoomed the former third-place broadcast to No. 1. Dan Rather was a distant memory.
That blast of ratings magic lasted less than a month, however, and now CBS News has settled back into third place (7.3 million viewers), behind top-rated NBC with Brian Williams (8.8 million) and increasingly strong second-place ABC with Charles Gibson (8 million).
Critics have blasted the “softer” elements in the revamped CBS newscast, especially the “Free Speech” segment with ordinary and extraordinary contributors (Rush Limbaugh) opining on the news. Superficial folks even blasted Couric’s platinum blondeness, which she has now tamed with a splash of brown.
Sagging ratings and criticism notwithstanding, the former “Today” star soldiers on, and CBS insists that the newscast is better off now than it was a year ago with temporary anchor Bob Schieffer at the helm.
Although Couric’s ratings have dropped every week since her Labor Day debut, the “Evening News” has about 400,000 more viewers than it did this time in 2005. And in the most recently weekly Nielsen’s, the drop-off from Sept. 5 appears to have stopped. The program actually ticked up in the ratings by about 300,000 viewers.
Unlike prime-time series, network newscasts are in it for the long haul. Moving viewers from one network to another for their nightly dose of TV news is a glacial undertaking, so nobody expects Couric to be yanked as quickly as, say, “Smith” on CBS.
The first real test of Couric’s anchoring skills could come with the Nov. 7 midterm elections, when she hosts CBS’ prime-time special coverage. Or when the next, big breaking news event occurs. And the first indication of her popularity as a news anchor won’t come until at least a full year’s ratings are tabulated.
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