$15 million of perkiness buys CBS third place

[Dr. Whiplash]

From USA Today...
Will Katie Couric ever click on The CBS Evening News? As the former NBC Today star passes the six-month mark still stuck deep in third place, that question is under debate.

Network news analyst Andrew Tyndall says it is increasingly clear Couric is a non-starter. CBS News counted on a quick fix from Couric's star power in a genre that is "reporter, not anchor, driven," Tyndall says. "She hasn't been a game changer."

Last week, ABC World News was first with 9.6 million viewers, followed by NBC Nightly News with 9.4 million and CBS with 7.5 million — down 400,000 from the same week last year under interim anchor Bob Schieffer. But Tyndall says tepid ratings are not entirely Couric's fault: CBS' low-rated local newscasts fail to give the Evening News a bump, and "if your affiliates aren't strong, you can have the best anchor, and you're not going to get people to switch the dial at 6:30." Still, CBS "misspent money that could have gone to newsgathering to pay for celebrity," he says. (Couric makes $15 million a year.) "CBS threw all this money at her to be the solution that would propel news into first."

CBS News vice president Paul Friedman calls Tyndall's assertions "nonsense" and says her salary has had no effect on hiring, raises or news coverage. "We are spending more money on news coverage than we were before, because we want to support Katie as best we can." Friedman says it will take time for Couric to gain a following, just as it once took NBC's Tom Brokaw and ABC's Peter Jennings. Internally, "I am not aware of any impatience with Katie, and for anyone to say it's a done deal is just ludicrous."

But critics who once sang Couric's praises are now focusing on what's wrong with her broadcast — and giving points to ABC's Charles Gibson, whose perennially No. 2-rated World News edged out Brian Williams' top-rated Nightly News last month for the first time in 10 years. That led to NBC's firing Monday of NightlyNews producer John Reiss.

Gibson, 63, "has momentum because the traditional core audience has been conditioned to receiving its 22 minutes of news from a white male over 60," former Evening News producer Erik Sorenson says. "Of the three current anchors, Charlie most resembles the Brokaw mold."