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The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

R

retrothoughts

Veterans Charlie Rose, the PBS talk host who once hosted an overnight CBS news program called Nightwatch nearly 30 years ago, and Gayle King, who's been hosting a talk show on her friend Oprah Winfrey's cable channel, have been called on to help in another revamp of CBS News' morning program, which may also mean a name change from its current title, The Early Show.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/charlie-rose-gayle-king-to-headline-new-cbs-morning-news_b96939

I still think it's the Curse of the "Captain". An old, evergreen rerun of Captain Kangaroo from the '70s is always better than anything the CBS News department has tried in the morning these last 4 decades.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

Maybe get Bryant Gumbel back or try Greg Gumbel on the show or Jack Snow or John S. or so on.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

The inability to make things work is not a curse of anything.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

CBS did have some success with the hard-news format with Diane Sawyer and Bill Kurtis, post-Kuralt. It was a welcomed break from celebrity interviews and cooking segments.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

A human dressed as Mr. Greenjeans reading news on CBS would probably get better ratings at this point.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

imhomerjay said:
The inability to make things work is not a curse of anything.
Click to expand...

Homer, don't take everything so seriously, although it is true that "Captain Kangaroo"
was probably the most durable show CBS ever put on before 9 AM.

For my part, I haven't cared for CBS's early-morning newscasts since the '70s; I
liked John Hart, and later on, Hughes Rudd, but I've tended to avoid CBS since.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

It was a great show in its day, but like all shows, that "day" eventually ends. Maybe there was a bit more left in the tank, but not much, really.

Whether this newest idea will work..should be interesting to see. Doing a "me too" show hasn't clicked, so maybe shaking up the formula will work this time around. Of course, there's the forumla and how it's executed--is Charlie Rose the right fit? Gayle King? Is there someone else who would be a better fit for the approach they seem to have in mind? (It actually sounds like one of the ideas floated in reports about Good Morning America, when there were questions about using George S. in the "lighter" hour, though that seems to have not hurt them in the end, given the narrowing gap with Today.)
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

I'll have to wait like everybody else to see if CBS can make
this work. As for the Captain, and you can correct me on
this, I think CBS's affiliates were pressuring the network to
do something that would take on "Today" and "GMA" head-
to-head from 7 to 9, rather than an hour of news from 7 to 8
and the Captain from 8 to 9. Certainly, cutting him back to
a half-hour and putting him at 6:30 AM didn't work, nor did
banishing him to the weekends.

But then again, I think the beginning of the end of "Captain
Kangaroo" came with the debut of "Sesame Street" in 1969;
true, he lasted only fifteen more years but the slow pacing
of the show just couldn't capture '70s kids used to the rapid
pace of "Sesame Street."

"GMA" narrowing the gap on "Today" is just another sign of
the Peacock Network's troubles (there's another thread on this).
I wonder, too, how much impact Scott Pelley is having on Brian
Williams' ratings.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

CBS should just do the counter-programming thing again. Find another "Captain" to steer the morning ship. Charlie Rose is an interesting choice, though.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

that Bunny Rabbit always struck me as the quiet but vindictive type
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

They're not going to do another kids show. Counter programming is one thing, but that's a ship that sailed decades ago. The economics aren't there for Saturdays to be more than a throwaway, let alone weekdays.

The GMA/Today race is interesting. Always hard to tell without research how much weight each multiple factor can have. NBC has been low before and seen Today still perform well; similarly, as ABC has moved from high points to low and back, GMA hasn't wavered significantly in either direction in direct correlation to primetime. Since they did adjust the on-air team, it can't be ruled out that tweaking the show didn't help alongside whatever problems NBC might be experiencing.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

Gayle King? No thanks! This greater Hartford resident had enough of her already! She anchored on WFSB-TV (CBS) channel 3 from 1981 to 1999. She's likely the reason Oprah's entire run was on the station! :(
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

KML-224 said:
Gayle King? No thanks! This greater Hartford resident had enough of her already! She anchored on WFSB-TV (CBS) channel 3 from 1981 to 1999. She's likely the reason Oprah's entire run was on the station! :(
Click to expand...

Gayle King is Oprah's best friend, don't you know? How would anyone know this? Because Gayle will tell you within the first 10 seconds of meeting you. And people I knew at WFSB told me it was pretty darn annoying back in the day.

Surely it's worse now - hope CBS builds a big enough set for Gayle's head to fit. I don't see how either host will do anything to draw people away from GMA or Today. So, my prediction: the curse will not be reversed any time soon.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

My first thought upon reading this: Really? Just a year after the last major shakeup, and CBS is resetting things again?

imhomerjay said:
Whether this newest idea will work..should be interesting to see. Doing a "me too" show hasn't clicked, so maybe shaking up the formula will work this time around. Of course, there's the forumla and how it's executed--is Charlie Rose the right fit? Gayle King? Is there someone else who would be a better fit for the approach they seem to have in mind? (It actually sounds like one of the ideas floated in reports about Good Morning America, when there were questions about using George S. in the "lighter" hour, though that seems to have not hurt them in the end, given the narrowing gap with Today.)
Click to expand...

CBS News promoted Scott Pelley and promoted a '60 Minutes approach' to its nightly news with some measurable success. Maybe this new Rose-King show will try to do that with more refined feature coverage (leave the cooking/crafts/clothing stuff to others).

But really, regardless of what they do at this point--shouldn't the main objective be basic profitability instead of pull-numbers-away-from-Today mode? Knowing that network news departments are now supposed to bring in advertising dollars, it's hard to imagine that CBS News is hemorrhaging enough cash for another morning show reboot.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

Here is an idea that CBS has not thought of and will likely not even consider at all: The CBS Morning News.

Not a "Here is 20 minutes of fluff followed by an attack piece on a conservative lawmaker" show, not a "2 hours of celebrity gossip and cooking tips" yawnfest, not a "news you can use" consumer outlet, but an actual Cronkite style newscast.

Imagine if when something nasty happens in the middle east, or the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded that an American broadcast morning show actually covered it instead of doing a Lohan's in jail again story or "why is cancer bad for you?" interview?
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

You must not have been around in the '60s and '70s because
that's what CBS used to do in the morning, with anchors like
Mike Wallace, Joseph Benti, John Hart, Hughes Rudd (and, briefly,
Sally Quinn), Bruce Morton, Lesley Stahl, and Richard Threlkeld.
Unfortunately, none of them ever made a dent in "Today"'s ratings;
there used to be a joke that the CBS Morning News had an audience
of one: Bill Paley. Actually, as I said on another posting, I enjoyed
Hart (in his shirtsleeves until Paley made him put on a jacket) and
Rudd (appropriately grumpy at 7 AM).

But I was thinking about this thread last night and I realized that
"Today" has been on since 1952 (longer than I--and a lot of you--
have been alive), and "GMA" (after the reformatting when "A.M.
America" tanked) hit just before ABC became number one in the
mid-'70s; people were leaving their sets tuned to the ABC channel
when they went to bed, then waking up to ABC and "GMA" the next
morning. With NBC's show an American institution and ABC's a charge-
out-of-the-gate, CBS was already at a disadvantage when it elected
to drop the "Morning News"/"Captain Kangaroo" combo and compete
with the others on their terms. And news habits change very slowly.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

A lot of CBS affiliates would love to have the time back for local morning news. You might recall some few years ago CBS had a "blended" format for their morning show which allowed for mostly local content in the 7am hour. A lot of stations were very reluctant to give that up when the network reclaimed it.

The cold reality is that there is probably not enough room for three OTA network morning shows, especially with all the competition from cable. CBS should give the entire two hours back to the local stations and be done with the headache.

The best incarnations of the two hour CBS show were the Bill Kurtis/Diane Sawyer effort in the early 80's, and the Harry Smith/Paula Zahn pairing in the early 90's. All the rest have been absolutely forgettable.

Personally, I miss Hughes Rudd. Loved his cranky and cynical delivery. And it was real news.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

A lot of people forget that Harry Smith and Paula Zahn took This Morning to #2 there in the late 90s beating out GMA during the Newman/McRee era, why CBS has never tried to rehire Zahn after she left CNNN or failed to keep Smith around is beyond me, because Smith and Zahn actually had success.
 
Re: The Curse of the "Captain": CBS to Change Its Morning News Show Yet Again

DToTheJ said:
A human dressed as Mr. Greenjeans reading news on CBS would probably get better ratings at this point.
Click to expand...

And maybe a "New" New Zoo Revue will replace Kathie Lee & Hoda!
 
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