Katie Couric to leave CBS News after the Presidential Election?

Cute. And absolutely, positively not what anyone is suggesting.

But then, it's a lot easier to make bullshit arguments than to admit this is a big problem with no easy solutions.

In this case it wasn't even a case of illegal immigrants living in the US needing emergency care - it was a case of Mexican citizens living in Mexico wanting free care.

 

Getting back to the topic of the thread ... Brian Williams must wake up feeling like a dog with two dicks every day when he sees he has to go up against Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.

The problem with hiring someone like Couric or Gibson, is they were hired because they were popular, not because they were respected journalists. Did anyone think cute Katie from the morning show was really going to deliver hard-hitting news on subjects like the war on Iraq?

Listen, a nightly news anchor is largely there for image (I'm sure they do a lot of work behind the scenes coordinating which stories to cover, etc., and Brian Williams still does some great on-location interviews in Iraq or with Bush in New Orleans, etc.), but really, their image is the most important thing. The idea that people would count on Couric or Gibson, formerly of peppy happy morning shows, to deliver them the world's gravest news was ludicrous.

There are any number of field reporters (mostly from NBC, not surprisingly) who I would rather see get a shot at the big chair than some dope who is trying to go from bantering with a chef with a funny hat in the mornings to telling us to prepare for nuclear war.

I also think it's funny that Katie has barely beaten any of the ratings generated by Bob Schieffer (who, btw, I thought was excellent).

 

Yeah, pern, but when I start thinking about who the geniuses at CBS might replace Couric WITH, I get the shakes and have to lie down.

 

Two names that will float early and often: Anderson Cooper and Lester Holt. Either one would be an improvement over Couric, who is simply miscast in the job.

Shoulda stuck with Schieffer.

 

Anderson Cooper? Never.
They are going to dump an anchor who specializes in happy talk, then go to another? Hardly.

Also, looks like Katie may go way sooner than later.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/business/media/11couric.html?ei=5065&en=4245c406a2c1619b&ex=1208577600&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

 

I think Cooper has much more hard news cred than Couric does. He's done both, but I think people will buy him in a hard news role much more readily than Couric.

(And on a side note, I think there's a major double-standard here, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone: no one can buy Katie Couric as an evening news anchor because they view her as a perky morning show girl, but no one had any qualms about Tom Brokaw or Charlie Gibson doing it, nor would they if Matt Lauer made the jump. Now sure why that is, but it's there.)

 

Because she's made her mark as being perky, not serious.
If you listen to her 9/11 performance, it still amazes me CBS thought she'd be good enough to handle an event like that.
Also, if you read Tom Brokaw's books, etc, about his career, they'd purposely give Jane Pauley the lighter stuff to do.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I watched Today every morning when KC and Matt Lauer were anchors. If you were going to frame it like baseball:

Katie was effectively a switch-hitter: She had the ability to do news and lighter stuff, which is pretty rare. (Just think of Brian Williams or Rather or Brokaw doing light.) She hit for a pretty good average from both sides of the plate, though her power was on the lighter, feature-y stuff. Added value: She came off as regular people (at least a regular person who makes eight-figures a year) what with rushing the kids to school, shopping at Target (she said anyway). (Again, it's hard to imagine the anchors from the old school in this context.) And she had a pretty good sense of humour with spontaneous (or at least seemingly so) banter and chemistry (for a time anyway) with the rest of the players. Matt could do news and the other but generally hit for a lower average on both sides of the plate. Of the others who came in, Campbell Brown was about the only one who had KC's switch-hitting ability.

CBS has KC hitting from the one side of the plate, not the one where her strength resides. And she has no opportunity to wing it with co-anchors, crew, etc., which again is her strength. (Think of a Gold Glove shortstop being remade as a DH.)

I used to make it to the set of the Today on a trip to NY (so my daughters could wake up and see me while I was on the phone with them). I know how goofy that sounds. It speaks volumes that I never watch the show now. Meredith Viera doesn't work for me at all.

YD&OHS, etc

 

Charles Gibson is a white guy with wrinkles. Decades of rating show this is what evening news viewers, most of whom are white and have wrinkles themselves, like to see.
Watch as Williams gets more and more avuncular with each passing day after Couric splits.
As for for who will replace her, well, I hear Bryant Gumbel's now available.

 

Not quite sure how we got so far afield from poor Katie Couric.

And yes, America doles out the most foreign aid cash - measured in gross dollars. But as a percentage of our total federal budget, or measured as a percentage of our GDP, we rank near the bottom - well below most other developed countries - and always have. We also complicate our foreign aid by tying a lot of it to trade agreements.

http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/cdi/_country/united_states

But the United States finishes near the bottom of the rankings in both the foreign aid and environment components. U.S. foreign aid is small as a share of its income and it “ties” a large share of this aid to the purchase of U.S. goods and services.

http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/cdi/_components/aid/

 

Back on Katie ... she used to be described as "perky" but she changed after her husband passed away. She seems to me today to be pretty grim ... almost bitter.

 

Mr Bat,

I think that KC got her perky back after a few months or a year or so, which would seem appropriate. She was a pretty good sport about stunting around and Halloween dress-up and all that stuff (e.g. her elfin Donald Trump). About the only time she had something less than good spirits would have been in Athens when she tried the hurdles (legs not looking so good, a lowlight left out of the end-of-Games package). I don't know when it went south with her and the rest of the cast but they left the impression that her leaving was unmourned, basically here's-your-hat-what's-your-hurry. A couple of digs in the last show. That said, I hung around the plaza ten or twelve times over the years and she did make an effort to try to talk to the little people lining the set. Maybe she successfully concealed her inner diva but at least she was trying.

YD&OHS, etc