| Wednesday, April 05, 2006 |
| Cute and cuddly news |
 America apparently likes their morning perky, but not necessarily their evening perky... I have to think that the folks who put this story up on the CBS News website were expressing some sort of insiders' grumble... just a guess... (Andy Rooney has weighed in on the Couric move, and he ain't happy -- and according to him, he's not alone -- "I’m not enthusiastic about it. I think everybody likes Katie Couric, I mean how can you not like Katie Couric. But, I don’t know anybody at CBS News who is pleased that she’s coming here," he told Don Imus this morning. Others are whispering the same sentiments apparently coming from the career news folks in the venerated building on West 57th... (full disclosure, I briefly worked at Blackrock -- the other CBS building -- in the "standards and practices" department -- you know, the censors... best lunch hour during that time: sneaking over to the Dan Rather building just to watch... wierdest person I ever shared an elevator ride with: Michael Bolton -- he's about 5'3" and he has an enormous head... enoooormous...)
Anyway, back to the "not good signs" from the AP story:
Now that Katie Couric is making the move from dawn to dusk, her legacy _ and the future of CBS News _ depends on the audience. And according to a new poll, that audience prefers to see her in the morning.
Asked if they would rather see Couric in her longtime role as "Today" host or as the first woman to anchor a network weekday evening newscast on her own, 49 percent favored the morning and 29 percent said evening, according to a poll conducted this week by The Associated Press and TV Guide. and sometimes the full ramifications of a story can be summed up in one devastating line.
The woman who dressed in Marilyn Monroe and SpongeBob SquarePants outfits on Halloween and gave viewers a tour of her colon will take the position once held by the iconic Walter Cronkite and the ousted Dan Rather. Okay, two lines:
"If we have another (terrorist) attack or hurricane and need life-saving information, I think her image is that of more fluff than fact and that's going to have an impact," said Jeff Alan, author of "Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News." and yet, there are the claims that all this Katie chatter is 1) media self-obsession run amock, 2) celebrity obsession run amok and 3) sexism run amok. To whit:
... claims that Couric lacks the "gravitas" for the job are "thinly disguised sexism," said news consultant Andrew Tyndall.
Few questioned Tom Brokaw when he switched from a "Today" host in the 1970s to become NBC top anchor. At ABC, Charles Gibson frequently did the morning and evening newscasts on the same day this past year during the late Peter Jennings' illness.
 Although to be fair, Brokaw and Gibson never actually dressed up in a giant sponge costume ...
Still, many will ask "what's the big deal about Katie?" since as that pudgy little misanthrope Jonah Goldberg points out:
... Broadcast journalism is one of the only fields in American life where the job gets demonstrably easier the higher you go. Or, to be more fair, the parts of the job that have to do with what everyone thinks of as "journalism" get easier and easier, and in some cases the journalism simply vanishes altogether.
Consider how the respected television analyst Andrew Tyndall defines the job of news anchor. The job has two parts, he told The Washington Post. First, they have to read the TelePrompTer. The second part involves "sitting behind the desk when there's a crisis." Of course, it's not quite that simple, particularly if the anchor in question is also the managing editor of the broadcast, as Tom Brokaw was, Dan Rather was, I believe Peter Jennings was and Katie Couric will be (Lou Dobbs is the M.E. of his show, too.) That involves quite a bit more than prompter reading. And even in local news, the amount of "work" an anchor puts in really depends on the anchor -- some double as meteorologists or M.E.s, some are exacting types who mark up their stories and serve as ersatz reporters (or actual reporter/anchors). As in any field, there are powder puffs. They're just not all powder puffs.
News is a team sport, where the producers and APs and writers (if the writers aren't doubling as APs) do much of the grunt work, but good reporters and anchors can still get their hands dirty. I don't think even Jonah Goldberg would describe Peter Jennings as a mere prompter reader ... but then again, there is increasing evidence that Mr. Goldberg hates journalists (that one's for you, Debbie Schlussel). Maybe it's because he's not exactly camera-ready ... the camera adding those damned ten pounds and all...
Oh damn, I'm guttersniping again...
And yet, as one inisder in the TVSPY watercooler put it, no truer words were spoken than when Les Moonves uttered the phrase (during the Dan Rather debacle,) "the days of the voice of God are over." (As are my posts about this subject. Suddenly I'm totally bored with it...)
Previous sniping:
Tags: Katie Couric, Today Show, NBC News, CBS News, Morning Shows |
posted by JReid @ 11:13 PM   |
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