CBS' Couric Experiment May Be Coming to a Close

People loved to tune into the perky Katie Couric when she hosted NBC's morning talker and led the way through various vapid segments. So, CBS lured her away with big bucks to replace Dan Rather and his phony news stories, where the viewers love her...not so much. The experiment with Couric in the anchor chair may soon come to a close:

After two years of record-low ratings, both CBS News executives and people close to Katie Couric say that the "CBS Evening News" anchor is likely to leave the network well before her contract expires in 2011 -- possibly soon after the presidential inauguration early next year.

Katie Couric and CBS are prepared for her early exit from the network.
Ms. Couric isn't even halfway through her five-year contract with CBS, which began in June 2006 and pays an annual salary of around $15 million. But CBS executives are under pressure to cut costs and improve ratings for the broadcast, which trails rival newscasts on ABC and NBC by wide margins.

Her departure would cap a difficult episode for CBS, which brought Ms. Couric to the network with considerable fanfare in a bid to catapult "Evening News" back into first place. Excluding several weeks of her tenure, Ms. Couric never bested the ratings of interim anchor Bob Schieffer, who was named to host the broadcast temporarily after "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather left the newscast in the wake of a discredited report on George W. Bush's National Guard service.

In a statement yesterday, a "CBS Evening News" spokeswoman said, "We are very proud of the 'CBS Evening News,' particularly our political coverage, and we have no plans for any changes regarding Katie or the broadcast." In a separate statement provided by another spokeswoman, Ms. Couric said, "I am working hard and having fun. My colleagues continue to impress me with their commitment to the newscast, and I am very proud of the show we put on every day."

She just wishes she could figure out some way to get people to watch it.

I haven't watched a network newscast in probably 10+ years. Why watch a collection of reports about stuff that I already read on the internet hours earlier?

The TV news business today is very good when things are breaking and events are rapidly changing, but as far as just reporting the "news of the day", they just can't compete with the internet, and with the exception of the demographic that won't turn them off because they died during the game show that preceded the broadcast, there's very little reason for viewers to tune in.