TVSquad

I'm not sure if anyone else in the world is experiencing this, but every time I watch ABC World News with Charles Gibson, something happens that confuses and scares me a little.

During the commercials, the vocal track is completely silent, and all I hear is the music track.

The announcement of an ABC News branded channel on YouTube yesterday is a little puzzling. First, if you go to the site, the info bar indicates that "ABC News" joined YouTube August 7, 2006. So, maybe they've been working feverishly for nearly three years on this, and they were finally ready to tell people about it.

The site will feature news from several ABC programs, like Good Morning America, 20/20, Nightline, ABC World News, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos. And, as a bonus, we get the "Quick Fix" segment, which ABC called "a daily dose of wit and occasionally wisdom" from ABC correspondents.

This is approximately the 57th "Katie Couric is doing badly in the ratings and will probably will fired or quit her job at CBS" story that has surfaced in the past year, but since it's The Wall Street Journal, perhaps he has a little more gravitas to it?

Possibly.

The newspaper is reporting that "CBS executives" and "people close to Couric" say that she will probably leave her job as anchor of The CBS Evening News well before her contract is up in 2011. She might even leave in early 2009, right after the current Presidential election is over.

Way back in August, I listed my choices for the three worst anchors on television. I said in that post that "later this week" I was going to name the best news anchors on television. Apparently, "later this week" meant seven months later. Sorry about that!

Here are my choices for the six best news anchors currently on television. Feel free to disagree and argue with me in the comments section (as if you need any suggestion from me for that).

"No offense to those over 60, but that's not a demo we want."

That's a quote from Les Moonves at a press conference yesterday, talking about statistics that say the average age for a viewer of the nightly network news programs is 61.

Looks like all of the younger people in the country are getting their news from the web and cable.

All this talk about Katie Couric's low ratings, how people don't like her, her New York interview, etc, etc. But did you know that she's actually the highest paid of the three nightly network news anchors?

Couric makes around $15 million a year. Over at NBC, Brian Williams is making around $10 million a year. Charlie...sorry, Charles Gibson? He has the most buzz right now but he actually makes the least, around $8 million a year. He didn't get a raise (nor did he want one) when he made the jump from Good Morning America to ABC World News (though I assume he'll get one when his contract is renewed in two years). He says the money thing is "irrelevent." Well, it would be to me too if I was getting $8 million a year.

So here we go again: yet more ammunition for the "Katie is bad, Charles is good" crowd.

[via TV Newser]

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric says that she's not sure she would have made the move from NBC if she knew she'd be doing the type of show she is doing right now.

In a New York interview, Couric says that understands that viewers hate change and that they tried to change too many things in the first couple of months that she was there, but that she's not sure she would have taken the gig if she knew it would end up as the same traditional network news show. She says there are days she wishes she hadn't taken it. She even hints that if it doesn't turn out to be the job for her, "I'll do something else that's really exciting and fulfilling for me."

I bet her CBS bosses are thrilled with those type of comments.

All this talk about how Katie Couric is single-handedly destroying network news (supposedly) overlooks one fact: she's actually losing less viewers than Brian Williams over on NBC.

Couric lost 287,000 viewers over the first 39 weeks of her show compared to what the show did last year, and during that same time, Williams lost 533,000. He's now in second place behind ABC and Charles Gibson.

Of course, it doesn't mean that everyone who is leaving NBC or CBS is going over to ABC and Gibson. I think it's an indication of what's going on with network news in general (and NBC in particular).

Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather has some harsh words for the show and Katie Couric.

Rather was on MSNBC, talking to Joe Scarborough (he's in Imus' spot in the morning right now) via phone. Although he said that Couric is a nice person, he also said that the show has been "dumbing it down, tarting it up," and that they're really focusing too much on celebrity coverage now.

That's the opinion of New York Post columnist Cindy Adams.

Besides the hype and media attention and marketing mistakes made by CBS, Adams thinks that it's Couric's voice is turning off viewers. That regular network news viewers want the stronger, deeper voice of a male anchor like Charles Gibson or Brian Williams.

In an attempt to figure out how Charlie Gibson has been able to power his ABC World News Tonight past the previously dominant NBC Nightly News in the ratings for 10 of the past 14 weeks, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz credited Gibson's "relaxed style" and willingness to go with his gut.

For example, on Tuesday night after controversial religious leader Jerry Falwell died, Gibson decided not to lead his broadcast with Falwell's death, unlike NBC and CBS. "[T]he decision underscored the extent to which Gibson is firmly in control at what recently emerged as the top-rated evening newscast," Kurtz wrote.

Katie,

There's been a lot of talk lately about the third place ratings that The CBS Evening News continues to get. There are people saying that you aren't professional enough and that the show doesn't cover hard news the way it should. You even fired your executive producer and hired another, and then this week fired a producer for plagiarizing (and just what are those first person "Notebooks" if other people are writing them?). These are all things that you have to fix, but may I make one suggestion that might help immediately?

Don't lead your newscast with news about Don Imus on the day that there was a major bombing in Iraq.

Joel told you yesterday about Rick Kaplan being brought on to replace Rome Hartman as the executive producer of The CBS Evening News. Kaplan is (supposedly) being brought on to replace some of the lighter touches that Katie Couric has brought to the anchor role with some harder news and a different angle (I think the first thing he should do is to just tell her to stop saying "hi, everyone" when she opens the show).

But I'm wondering, will a new producer really help? Nothing against Kaplan (or Couric), but aren't viewers choices when it comes to the network news based on other things besides a new producer (or a new set or new theme music or a new logo)? Sure, he can make wide, sweeping changes, and maybe they'll help the quality of the show (even if they don't help the ratings), but aren't viewers set in their ways? They like Brian Williams. They like Charles Gibson, and these two will battle for the #1 slot. The CBS Evening News has been third for a long, long time, and maybe that's just where it will be, getting 6-7 million viewers a night.

I hope they didn't think the star power of Couric was going to bring the show to #1 quickly, if ever.

I watch a lot of television, but one thing I'd hate to do is to actually keep track of what stories are talked about the most on the three networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) every night during their newscasts. Luckily, The Tyndall Report does it for me.

What were the three news stories that got the most coverage during the past year? Obviously, the war in Iraq was the No.1 story, followed by Israeli-Hezbollah fighting and the Hurrincane Katrina aftermath. The report lists the top 20 stories of 2006 (and I was very happy to see that Britney Spears' crotch is nowhere to be found on the list).

The report also lists the reporters that had the most airtime. The top three were NBC's David Gregory, ABC's Martha Raddatz and CBS' Jim Axelrod. I thought Lara Logan would be higher on the list, because I always watch her on CBS. The way her hair cascades down and her accent makes me shiver I think she's a first-rate journalist.

This is one of those "insider" news stories that most people won't care about one way or the other.

The New York Post's Page Six is reporting that former MSNBC head Rick Kaplan might be heading over to The CBS Evening News to help Katie Couric and her ratings. Of course, this story just says "rumored." It doesn't even have enough information to say "sources say" or "insiders say" or even "an anonymous person inside CBS." So who knows where they got the news.

Will this even help? Some people believe that the nightly network newscasts are a dinosaur, a thing of the past (I'm not one of them). Even if that's not true, maybe the CBS Evening News will just be in third place forever. That's where the show has been for a while and always will be, behind The NBC Nightly News and ABC World News.

[via TV Newser]