The low ratings for Katie Couric have sparked a chorus of doomsayers for Katie's "career move" from A.M. TV at NBC to trying to fill the shoes at the CBS anchordesk formerly home to Bob Schieffer, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, etc. Rathergate.com has been bold enough to predict that the axe might fall as soon as May 25, 2007, as the ratings from the latest sweeps are felt throughout Madison Ave.
The purpose of the diary is to simply note that prediction, and have mediawatchers see if it actually comes true.
Since the media loves the horserace aspect of the presidential race, it is with a sense of poetic justice that we here recount the bare bones of the current ratings horserace of newscasts at the Three Blind Mice (jump over the desk, please)
#1 is Disney/ABC's Charlie Gibson with 8.1 million viewers.
#2 is GE/NBC's Brian williams with.....7.5 million viewers.
#3 is CBS's Katie Couric with ........ 6.05 million viewers ... or the lowest in 20 years, and way down from the 7.6 million she had when she made the switch from NBC, and things settled down after the initial hype, meaning 5 weeks after she made her debut (data from news clips on Nielsen ratings as of 5-9-2007).
But the real attraction of this horserace, IMO, is the growing sense that, like the less than competent "heck-of-a-job Brownie" getting his comeuppance in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, that the less than prime-time standards used to select a news anchor at CBS will themselves have been shown to have failed. Already, several attempts at NEWS/EMs have been applied. A writer who plagarized material from the Wall St. Journal for Katie Couric's blog has been dismissed. Couric's photo was airbrushed in a CBS publication to make her look less heavy than she actually was at the time. Various news managers have been brought in to apply News-CPR to the broadcast, in essence negating the original rationale for bringing Couric over to CBS in the first place. In the small circle of news-anchor-level talent, Diane Sawyer's ratings might have eclipsed Couric's at NBC had she stayed there; yet few news pieces seem to pick up that aspect of the competition, preferring to make it seem only one lone female against "the guys."
With the focus so much on Couric, few are turning the spotlight on the standards employed by males (or unnamed female executives?) at CBS in making the news anchor decision. So let's look a bit at Couric's biggest award, as far as I can tell, via Wikipedia's bio of Couric. Care to take an educated guess? Pulitzer prize? NY Times bestseller author? Investigative journalism?
The award is an Emmy, specifically for her "coverage" as on-air co-host of the 2005 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Now, this was not her first time covering the parade, as she filled that role from 1991-1995.
Nor is getting an Emmy for doing that broadcasting job particularly difficult to get, as some nine broadcasters managed to pick up Emmy's for doing that same task. Meaning, once you're given the assignment, chances are better than even that at some point you get to stick an Emmy on your mantlepiece and more importantly on your resume.
But what is particularly startling about Couric's Emmy is that the standards of the Emmy Committeeseemed to be even lower than CBS' News's standards for selecting a news anchor. There were at least two legitimate news events that happened at the 2005 Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. As there were strong winds, it was anticipated that there might be a problem with any of the 35 floats in the parade. And in fact, there was an accident, as one of the M&M's ballons injured two sisters from Albany, NY. There is controversy over whether the accident was completely censored from the live broadcast, or whether Couric, who followed the tightly written script very closely, managed to get in a small reference to the accident. The net result, in terms of broadcast, what that the 2.5 million people watching the parade, and the extimated 44-60 million people watching the parade on television, actually had a real sense that there was a news event being covered on live TV, by a purportedly skilled anchorperson. Basically, it was left to other news outlets to make the general audience aware that there had been an accident at the parade. Remember, Couric got an Emmy for this.
There is yet another twist to the 2005 parade, which might interest Kossacks in particular. That is that the major news outlets seemed to ignore a right-wing publicity effort tried at the parade by none other than Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO), the organization made famous by "Dr." James Dobson (really a Ph.D. psychologist, rather than an M.D.). The Huffington Post reported that the right-wing Christian group attempted to distribute 5,000 anti-stress balls at the parade, as part of a promo effort to call attention to an anti-gay website, and to some ads that the group spent $130,000 on, to also promote the website, and, of course, its message. This apparantly was too far from the Macy's script to get mention on Couric's part of the Macy's broadcast.
At this point, it behooves us to point out that this is not just a routine flub, unintentional omissions in a crowded news day. Far from it.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is slower even than the OJ car chase. Thirty-two helium filled ballons, with maybe 40-60 handlers apiece, march
a distance of maybe 2.5 miles, with plenty of designated spots, over the course of a couple of hours. If you can stand it, Kouklagirlg has posted on YouTube actual clips of the parade, at its real pace. Couric could have low-crawled to both stories, and still have covered them both. Moreover, Thanksgiving, of course is a national holiday, many people stay home with family, and more to the point, Macy's parade is a traditional kick-off to the mother of all consumer events, "Black Friday," touted as usually the biggest single shopping day for retailers. And in a post 9-11-2001 world, where the preferred anti-terrorist strategy is to encourageshopping, the major news story of the next day's news cycle is likely to be "Black Friday" and how much shopping gets done. Couric could have covered both stories even 24 hours later, and easily have caught up with the relevant facts.
From a cultural point-of-view, The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade ("America's Parade") is an American Cultural phenomenon. Getting picked to broadcast the event both reflects the perceived popularity of the announcer, and by the sheer numbers of the 40-60 million plus viewers, provides a nice, easy career boost for the chosen announcer, hopefully setting the stage for bigger and better things. In round numbers, the main broadcasters get about 2 hours of "face time" in front of about 56 percent of the universe that watches television.
So, as a bit of a side note, it remains of some interest who NBC chooses to use as the news face at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade this year. Serious newspeople might actually turn it down. One critic of the gross materialism of the parade, Ellen Chanson, complained that the event was one long commercial to promote the products and people involved. In 2005, Trump promoted a $1 million giveaway of "shopping sprees," some of which would help his business interests, in clothing. And there is very little news value to the introduction to the parade of new characters, like Scooby Doo, or the attempt to do an image makeover of Mr. Potato-head, dropping the pipe-smoking aspect, and putting the couchless Mr. Potatohead in, of all things, running shoes and carrying a water-bottle to drink on the run. The change over might have seemed obvious at the Potato Board, but even in the slow-motion march of the parade, you only pick up on it if you actually pay attention to the script, or come back to the topic at times like this, when you're actually researching a topic. This is the stuff of PR, not news. Once again, it reflects the "mission creep" of the entertainment side of the business into the news side, and not for the better. The parade tries to sell toys, movies, clothes, and record albums. (I will not, however, go as far as Bill O'Reilly, and raise the false specter of "The War against Christmas," mentioning it only in passing because one can guess it will come up in comments). Rather than covering the news, it appears the Ms. Couric was content to gloss over or bury the events of the day, in favor of such fawning dialog over a bear character using the word "furbulous."
So here's hoping somebody's May 25 is not-so-"furbulous." CBS should not just excise the symptom, of Ms. Couric, but also the cause, namely the group of suits endorsing lax standards. Note to Emmy Committee: standards review are in order at the statute shop too. Meanwhile, I look forward to see who NBC annoints to be the new "Black Friday" shopping anchor for the 2007 Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. It will affect my ability to shop my way around the threat.