Left-wing news pixie Katie Couric, the first woman to anchor a major network TV nightly news show on a permanent basis, has been beset by continually falling ratings since the debut of her program over a month ago.Last week, in the fifth week of her anchoring the CBS Evening News, Couric's program drew an average of 7.04 million viewers. NBC's Nightly News led the pack at 8.56 million, with ABC's World News grabbing 7.97 million, according to the Nielsen TV ratings service.
Couric's debut on Sept. 5 was the highest-rated news program of the night, as was to be expected, and the ratings for CBS Evening News are higher than they were a year ago, but the downward trend must be discouraging for CBS, which pinned its hopes on Couric's popularity as former host of NBC's Today Show.
The move to Couric, however, was merely a cosmetic one. As replacement for the openly left-wing weirdo Dan Rather, Couric was expected to bring a certain smoothness and subtlety to the presentation, but nothing more. She has presided over a program that breaks no new ground either in the ideas on offer or in the way of presenting them. Once the initial interest in seeing Couric sitting behind the CBS news desk wore off, there was nothing of value to attract viewers to her program.
Viewership of TV network evening news programs has been sliding for years, and Couric is part of that trend. Untiil the programs find a way to be more informative, fair, and sensible, the decline will continue.
From Karnick on Culture.
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