TVSquad

Here are the weekly TV ratings, by number of viewers.

Um, OK, I had to do a double take (or maybe a triple) when I saw these ratings for Lost. Number 1 for the week?? I knew it would do better since it was the season finale, but the top spot, up 18 spots from last week? That's pretty cool.

The new edition of Password took the number 3 spot. Meanwhile, the number 18 show really kinda baffles me.

1. Lost (ABC)
2. Two and a Half Men (CBS)
3. Million Dollar Password (CBS)

That's the advice the NBC newsman gave Katie Couric when she left The Today Show to take the anchor gig at The CBS Evening News in 2006.

He told her that going from a morning show like Today to a hard news anchor position was "a dive off the high board" and that it's "harder than it looks." Though I wonder if anyone gave that advice to Brokaw when he left Today to do The NBC Nightly News back in the 80s. Or maybe they didn't because he's a guy, right?

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).

• It's the 60th anniversary of NBC Nightly News.
• Today's tip: if you're selling bootleg copies of The Carol Burnett Show, don't use a newspaper's address as your address. [via Lee Goldberg]
• Should CBS show Dexter, even if it is cleaned up?
• Tom Shales is not happy with Turner Classic Movies.
• What did William Shatner, Tina Fey, and Naveen Andrews do during the strike?
• This may be a silly question to ask on a TV blog, but are you a movie person or a TV person?
• Aaron Barnhart has a list of strike winners and losers.

OK, this isn't exactly "Who Shot JR," but it does have people guessing.

NBC Nightly News will have a new announcer starting tonight (longtime announcer Howard Reig retired in 2005), and they're trying to make it a surprise. The only clues from the network is that it's a name we all know, and this person had "an extensive, award-winning theatrical career for nearly forty years." Some of the guesses from fans include James Earl Jones, Patrick Stewart, James Lipton, Morgan Freeman, and ... Tom Brokaw? Yes, he was great in A Streetcar Named Desire.

"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.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams has two gigs this week: hosting the nightly news show and preparing to host Saturday Night Live this weekend, rehearsing and helping to write some segments. Some people say he's blurring the line between news and entertainment, but I'm looking forward to seeing how he does. And he's keeping a blog of how the week is going so far.

The Daily Nightly is one of the better network news blogs anyway, but these entries show Williams' funny side. After working one night, he actually had to go to 30 Rock and join the writers for their all-night writing session.

We told you a couple of weeks ago that Brian Williams is going to host Saturday Night Live on November 3. But what if Katie Couric hosted instead?

That's the intriguing question asked by TV critic Ed Bark, who wonders if talk about Couric not having enough "gravitas" to host a nightly network news show will now go away. How can her detractors say that now that Williams is crossing over the line that separates the news division and the entertainment division?

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.