Katie, Bar the Door…

I sat down tonight to watch the debut of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.
Well, that’s not an entirely true statement, I guess. I sat down to draft my fantasy football team online and, in the process of drafting, I had the Official 52″ HDTV of the ConBlog on as video wallpaper. Then, at 6:30pm EDT, Katie’s maiden voyage at the Tiffany network was beamed into my living room.
Here are my initial observations:

The last time CBS hired a big name from another network, it was Bryant Gumbel–also late of the Today show on NBC. That hiring turned out to be a huge failure for CBS. But CBS hasn’t just hired Katie Couric, they’ve made her their “brand.” They want you to think “Katie” when you think “CBS” and think “CBS” when you think “Katie.”
CBS is trying to create a more engaging newscast…engaging to whom, I’m not really sure. Already in Katie’s debut, they’ve used a Peter Gabriel bumper, shown the first baby photos of Tom Cruise’s kid, and used clips from both “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” All of this in the same show as a “back to square one” story on the War on Terror and a kicker story on portaits for Nicaraguan kids done by American art students.
If I had to describe this broadcast, I’d say it was “all over the place.” It wasn’t dreadful, but it definitely wasn’t groundbreaking. It will be a while before Katie hits her stride, and even longer before CBS can gain some ground on ratings. Sure they’ll see a bump tonight, but that’s the curiosity factor and nothing more.
If CBS truly wants more people to tune in–and keep their branding–then they’ll do what they’ve done to every other show on that network that has commanded an instant audience. From this time on, the new name in the ConBlog Lexicon for the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” is…
CSI: The Katie Evening News.
Will I watch CSI: The Katie Evening News again? Not regularly. I’ll catch it on Thursday because Rush Limbaugh will be doing the “freeSpeech” segment, but I don’t see it being a regular part of my evening.
What I don’t think the suits at CBS get, though, is that people aren’t going to decide to tune in CBS because they’re using warm colors and have a kinder, gentler newscast. What will set Katie apart, is how she holds down the anchor desk during live coverage of a major, breaking story. People will want to know that they can go to CBS News in a crisis to get the information they want…and that’s where Katie will have the toughest job winning people over, I figure. It was one thing to be at the desk of Today when 9/11 happened and then throw it to Brokaw when he was ready to go on. It’s entirely another when you’re the person on the marquee.
Anyway, best of luck to Katie. Maybe she and the new guard at CBS will be able to bring them some place they haven’t been in a long time: closer to real journalism. Time will tell.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com