The much-hyped Katie Couric-led CBS Evening News premiered last night, and early ratings returns show the newscast was a hit, landing at number one in its time slot.
Couric replaced anchor Bob Schieffer, who was himself a replacement for the prematurely ousted Dan Rather. In April, CBS had wooed Couric away from her NBC Today host job and heavily promoted the new, revamped newscast premiere.
The Evening News relaunch averaged a 9.1 rating and 17 share, making it CBS's highest-rated newscast since the Nagano Olympics coverage in 1998. Last night's newscast doubled the ratings the show was pulling in the past month, when it was averaging a 4.4/9 share.
TV critics dismissed the new format of the show as too soft and containing a dearth of hard news. While they noted Couric was a professional, capable anchor, they questioned her choices of editorial content, such as a story about Vanity Fair's photos of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes baby girl, Suri.
Media Life Magazine said the new format was "feature heavy, full of gimmicks...and willing to treat the first pictures of Suri Cruise as a serious story."
San Francisco Chronicle's Tim Goodman also cited the Suri Cruise pictures as questionable material for a nightly newscast.
"While soft stories are not exactly excluded from network news, this brand of celebrity rubbernecking...is a clear departure from tradition," Goodman wrote. "An argument could be made that with a scant 22 minutes to brief the country on what's happening here and abroad, pimping a glossy magazine might be considered filler."
Tom Shales wrote in his Washington Post column that, "a title change would seem to be in order. Maybe The CBS Evening No-News."
The CBS News department was once considered the high watermark of TV journalism, home to legends Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and the investigative reporters of 60 Minutes.
After Couric said during last night's newscast that she hadn't yet come up with a sign off line she liked, Barry Garron in The Hollywood Reporter offered his idea.
"Good night from all of us at what used to be CBS News," Garron acidly quipped.
Comments (12)
she needs to do hard edge news stories and leave crap like this to the ladies of the view.
Really don't see the whole Cruise/Holmes/Suri as news worthy. Couric is an idiot anyway, she is bound for failure.
As a newsreader Couric was more alert tonight than she has been giddily sleepwalking through the last year on Today. But if she has to read lead-ins to lame pointless stories like "For years children have been told not to eat with their fingers now they are paying for lunch with fingerprint scans" (I paraphrase and it is probably an improvment)I will have to concede that Williams on NBC is the best network news choice.
I think Ms. Couric did an excellent job last night. Her position as a network anchor has gotten more press than Brian Williams (NBC) and Charles Gibson (ABC) COMBINED. She had so much to live up to last night, and I think she met those expectations. She didn't treat the Suri story as "hard news", and likened it to the baby pictures of Prince Charles. (One would be hard pressed not to admit that Hollywood has become our version of royalty) I think Ms. Couric's goal is to get the audience involved in the news again. She will never BE the Big Three, but by bringing the news to the people, she bears a strong resemblance to Mr. Edward R. Murrow.
I believe, despite all the media attention focused on her, Ms. Couric did a very good job (although I can understand why most of the media critics pounced on her). EVERY anchor of the "CBS EVENING NEWS" becomes a "celebrity" to their viewers (and that included Doug Edwards, who was their first national nightly news anchor in 1948- loved that '49 excerpt!- through Cronkite and Rather and, of course, Katie)...would there be the same response and interest if THALIA ASSURAS had been chosen, instead?
Sorry didn't really care about the Baby Suri ( Boring ) Tom bores most ppl.
What do you expect from her prior performance at NBC?
Couric is as much of a journalist as I am the King of England.
Her main qualifaction seem to be that she displayed the same knee jerk liberal bias at the View ..as her predecessor, Dan Rather,displayed when he was CBS anchor. No reason not to continue to watch the Fox news Channel as far as I'm concerned.
well we all did think that the baby was fake!
I suppose her follow up story will be a diaper change.
Yeah, including Suri was absolute crap. Nobody cares. If they did, they would watch Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight or something of the like.
I rarely watch any network news anymore anyway, it's all pretty much worthless and content-free. My favorite tv news is the Journal by DW, out of Berlin.
I'm sick of Katie, both Holmes and Couric. I hope I never hear that name again.