• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

CBS Fires The Wrong Person

F

fredflintstone

Guest
The New York Times is reporting this morning that CBS has fired the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and kept anchor-bimbo Katie Couric.

The new guy comes from MSNBC, where he was fired last year due to poor ratings. Before that he was at CNN, where he was fired because of - guess what - low ratings. Now, he inherits the Katie Show which already tanks in the ratings.

The Times reports after some early curiosity viewing, Katie continues to lag well behind the numbers Bob Schieffer was getting 12 months earlier.

Still, Katie has had one booster outside the CBS PR office and that guy actually asks people to pay him for his opinions.

The suits pay talent big bucks saying that talent is the reason why people watch - or don't watch. But when people don't watch, the over-priced talent are the last to get fired. Let me see if TV Land is going to show the last episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show - the one where everybody gets fired, except Ted.
 
fredflintstone said:
The New York Times is reporting this morning that CBS has fired the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and kept anchor-bimbo Katie Couric.

The new guy comes from MSNBC, where he was fired last year due to poor ratings. Before that he was at CNN, where he was fired because of - guess what - low ratings. Now, he inherits the Katie Show which already tanks in the ratings.

The Times reports after some early curiosity viewing, Katie continues to lag well behind the numbers Bob Schieffer was getting 12 months earlier.

Still, Katie has had one booster outside the CBS PR office and that guy actually asks people to pay him for his opinions.

The suits pay talent big bucks saying that talent is the reason why people watch - or don't watch. But when people don't watch, the over-priced talent are the last to get fired. Let me see if TV Land is going to show the last episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show - the one where everybody gets fired, except Ted.
Click to expand...

Fred,

You are aware how the game is played. Find a scapegoat and get rid of that individual...never go after the person causing the problems.

Katie will be at CBS for a while longer, hate to say. The executives at Black Rock are not about to admit they made one huge mistake.

Meanwhile Gibson and Williams will just steamroll over Katie. Bob Schieffer has to be laughing himself sick when it comes to the ratings.
 
I would think that given Schieffers class and professionalism, he would be saddended and perhaps frustrated at the overall situation. He has a good sense of humor, but this is no laughing matter for him...and the network he's been loyal to for many years.
 
What a sad commentary on what the networks have all become. News is entertainment. Entertainment is (mostly) trash. This particular situation is indictative of what it's like when non-Broadcasters without a PASSION for their product make the decisions about the product.
 
From Imus this morning...

Katie has never worked with the new producer. She was not part of the decision to change executive producers and didn't find out until just before the out-going ep got the bad news.

Now there is speculation that this move is the first step toward moving Katie off the evening news and onto the Morning Show and into an expanded role in 60 Minutes. Yes, she can do morning TV. But so could Bryant Gumbel and he couldn't save the Morning Show. Besides one of the female co-hosts on the morning show is sleeping with the boss.

Maybe they should dumb Jim McManus. He's had too much thrill of victory; now he needs to experience the agony of defeat. If we learn more from our failures than our successes, he's due for a big lesson.

Most of all: Bring back Bob.

But this is CBS. Dan Rather, the human oil slick, had over 20 years of declining ratings and incidents that made CBS a laughing-stock (and would have gotten anybody else in broadcasting fired) and nobody touched him. Did he have something on somebody?
 
Al Timiter said:
What a sad commentary on what the networks have all become. News is entertainment. Entertainment is (mostly) trash. This particular situation is indictative of what it's like when non-Broadcasters without a PASSION for their product make the decisions about the product.
Click to expand...

It's like the movie "Network" was the blueprint for what has happened to broadcast journalism isn't it? If entertainment was the road CBS wanted to take they should have hired Mary Hart to anchor the news.

As for Katie moving from CBS anchor to the network's morning show, I highly doubt that would happen. For one thing Couric left Today because of the hours and its impact on her family. Secondly, the CBS Morning Show has been in third place for years and it would be a further embarrassment to Couric to have to go head-to-head against her former Today Show colleagues and lose. According to Don Imus CBS had been talking with him about moving his show from MSNBC to their network, which actually would be an improvement of what CBS is currently airing.

If the ratings continue to slip CBS will just move Couric out of the anchor chair and perhaps assign her some "traveling correspondent" role until her contact expires. Then she will just fade away. Remember two words Katie; Connie Chung.
 
Mark_Giardina said:
It's like the movie "Network" was the blueprint for what has happened to broadcast journalism isn't it? If entertainment was the road CBS wanted to take they should have hired Mary Hart to anchor the news.
Click to expand...

The other way around. Many of the plot elements of "Network" were based on things that happened at CBS during the 60s and early 70s - plus some dramatic license, of course. CBS News was placed under network president Jack Schneider. This led to Fred Friendly's resignation as News Division president when Schneider, former salesman and local station manager, when Schnieder refused to preempt the daytime schedule for coverage of Senate hearings on the Viet Nam war. Along with this re-oganization, network radio news, and local radio and TV news were taken away from the CBS News Division and given to the radio division and to the local owned and operated stations (the same thing Robert Duvall did in Network, leading to Bill Holden's resignation).
 
If they really decide to replace Couric on the Evening News, couldn't they make her a full-time 60 Minutes correspondent and/or give her a prime-time hour (just one day a week) for interviews? That might be the best way for CBS to use her.
I'd be more interested in who would be in line to get the Evening News anchor chair. Anderson Cooper?
 
Bring back Bob Schieffer!! Most definitely agree on that one. Katie seems more at home with an entertainment show than she does with news and it has shown with her newscasts. Her hosting The Early Show or a once a week interview show or she could become like Barbara Walters and just host interview specials every once in a while would definitely be just the thing for her and she would spend more time with her kids.
 
Garrett said:
But isn't she attached to a 3 year contract? I don't think they can just move her somewhere else?

Can they?
Click to expand...

It could happen...she could be reassigned to co-anchor The Early Show, something in her field of work. :D

If only they had selected Roger Mudd all those years ago...
 
I think you missed my point...

I believe that there is a clause in her contract that says that "she is the sole anchor for CBS Evening News, and will contribute to 60 Minutes."

That's what I heard in the begining. Is that not the case?
 
Nothing against Couric in particular - I'm not a fan, but I'm not a detractor, either. But Bob Schieffer was a great anchor - a very smart and experienced journalist with a sense of humor. Bringing back Bob would be my preference.
 
Garrett said:
I think you missed my point...

I believe that there is a clause in her contract that says that "she is the sole anchor for CBS Evening News, and will contribute to 60 Minutes."

That's what I heard in the begining. Is that not the case?
Click to expand...

If so, then probably not. I didn't miss your point because you asked "can they?" and I said "It could happen..." because well, you never know. But if what your saying is true, then they can't move her elsewhere.
 
I think Bob is a great anchor but way too old. You would never see a woman his age as an anchor no matter how good she is.

Did CBS really think that Katie was going to turn things around this quickly? I say give her time.It's amazing that we in this country need to make stars out of people who read the news. I've always heard at the BBC they just have someone who sits down and reads the news. They don't try to make stars out of them.

I am convinced after the Anna Nicole Smith mess that TV News is wothless.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom