Buh-Bye Katie, Redux
The Associated Press has confirmed: Katie Couric will leave the anchor chair at CBS when her contract ends in June. As we noted previously, there was no real impetus for the network--or Ms. Couric--to extend the deal. Five years into her run, CBS was stuck with a third-place evening newscast, while paying Couric an annual salary of $15 million.
CBS has finally discovered the wisdom of Branch Rickey: "We finished last with you, we can finish last without you."
Slate's Jack Shafer thinks this is a non-news story about the news:
In the coming weeks, as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal do backflips trying to figure out who will replace Couric as anchor, do yourself a favor and ignore the noise. The job and the programs no longer matter.
Bill Wyman in the Atlantic argues that the Couric experiment was a mistake from the start-- a desperate gamble by CBS management
Few people want to see a news digest show at 6:30 in the evening anymore, and those that do like Brian Williams and the NBC news team. Bob Shieffer, Couric's predecessor, was mired in third place as well and the network felt it had to do something. So it threw some money at the problem and bought a celebrity.
Wyman asks and answers the more interesting question: “How did Couric hang on for so long at the Evening News? Never underestimate the value of a smart PR campaign”
Couric was definitely the beneficiary of plenty of positive spin from media critics. This went well beyond the usual corralled rebellion school of noncritical criticism. At times, press critics were impassioned defenders of the Perky One. Here is the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik in 2009:
And I think in Couric and Sawyer we have two really outstanding journalists. And we have the best journalists at their network in those jobs.
KURTZ: You -- you wrote this week...
ZURAWIK: Yes.
KURTZ: ... that Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer are now the two strongest journalistic forces on network TV.
ZURAWIK: Yes....
I mean -- again, as you said in the introduction, that -- what we went through with Katie Couric was just insane. You know? And -- and -- and we should all probably in some ways apologize to Katie Couric, because it took a while for us to all step back and say, "You know what? She's a great journalist. And she's doing a great job in this." A great job at that anchor desk.
Zurawik's take on Couric has shifted wildly over the last few years. On Sunday he was far more critical of the soon-to-be-former anchor:
I believe she failed. I believe, by any standard, you judge this as a failure. But I believe she failed -- and this is going to sound harsh, but she didn't work hard enough. About three months ago, I wrote a piece saying -- when they changed the morning show -- said, they have got to change the evening news. It's dead in the water, it's a step behind everybody.
Look at how Diane Sawyer energized ABC's evening news. She has her star. She brings --
KURTZ: What about the fact that the "CBS Evening News' won numerous awards? Katie Couric is in Iraq this week. Is that really a fear wrap?
ZURAWIK: Yes, it is fair, because when she took the job, she said, I don't want to be traveling just to stand in front of some foreign backdrop, blah, blah, blah. She was a reluctant traveler at first.
She just simply -- you know, I saw a quote about her and I heard this from somebody at CBS, said that Katie Couric works hardest around contract time. That's a harsh thing to say, but that's what they're saying there, Howie.
His recent views echo his opinion from 2008:
But I have to tell you something -- and this is true -- Katie Couric did not work very hard to do that newscast.
One has to ask -- why was Zurawik so protective of Couric in 2009 when he knew that she was flailing and failing in Uncle Walter's big chair?
I wonder if it has something to do with an interview with a certain VP candidate?
The Palin interview was he one “triumph” Couric has in her tenure at CBS. Like Tina Fey and Kathleen Parker, her Palin-bashing earned her tremendous praise from the critics and her MSM brethern.
It seems fair to remember the essential Couric before nostalgia and hype create the next new image. The real Couric comes through loud and clear in her treatment of Richard Jewell. This exchange took place after Jewell was exonerated by the FBI:
That evening a very testy Katie Couric tracked Bryant down at Nadya Light’s apartment, where we had gone to watch the news. "I want you to know that I canceled interviewing Barbra Streisand in L.A. for Richard Jewell. Don’t think he is always going to be a news story. No one will care about him in three days," she said, according to Bryant.
And this is how she reported his death:
Back in 1996, the FBI investigated Richard Jewell, an Atlanta security guard, in connection with the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. Richard Jewell died today of complications from diabetes. He was 44. Jewell was never charged with any crime. There is much more CBS… [FADE-OUT]
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