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Mass Appeal
Moving on isn't always easy. Just ask Katie Couric.For more than a decade, she hosted NBC's Today, America's No. 1 morning show. Then last spring, CBS called. The network known for Cronkite and 60 Minutes wanted Couric to bring her magic to the evening news, taking over from Dan Rather. Of course, she said yes. Who wouldn't?
So in September, Couric stepped into the big leagues. Her arrival -- as the first woman to go solo as a network evening anchor -- launched a flood of speculation about how the TV news biz was about to change. But after a brief ratings honeymoon, CBS Evening News With Katie Couric settled right back where Rather's show had been: No. 3, behind NBC and ABC.
While Couric is down, no one should count her out. In her 20-year network career, she has had an almost flawless mass-market touch. Whether she was interviewing Bushes or Clintons, Kennedys or schoolkids, she always managed to ask the questions Today viewers wanted answered. When her husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in 1998, viewers mourned with her. When she had her own colonoscopy broadcast live, millions watched, grimaced, then called their own doctors.
When RD sat down with Couric a few weeks ago, we had a list of questions: some tough, some personal, all focused on the RD: What's it like going from the No. 1 morning show to the No. 3 evening newscast? Is that like, Ouch!? Or are you really unfazed by ratings?
Couric: I am blissfully unaware, but I am not exactly living under a rock either. The bottom line is that seven and a half million people are watching us. No, it's not the same audience that CBS Evening News had in 1968, but it is still huge. And I feel a tremendous responsibility to do the best job I can for those who are watching. I'm trying to strip the more formal traditional newscast of its pretension while maintaining a strong sense of decorum.
RD: You've always been a strong news journalist, but decorum is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Katie Couric and Today.
Couric: I have always seen myself as someone viewers can relate to, who is probably feeling the same things they are -- compassion or empathy or, once in a while, frustration or anger, for instance, when getting the runaround from a politician. The essence of who I am has probably less of an outlet at night. People who enjoy the spontaneity of Today may miss that.
RD: Are you still experimenting with the newscast?
Couric: I didn't come here to do a traditional newscast, and I don't think CBS hired me to do a traditional newscast. But it is a very delicate balance: making the news innovative and different, but not so different that it's alienating. The challenge is to give people a really good sense of what is going on in just 22 minutes.
idea of moving on.
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