TVSquad

As we've said here many times before, Brian Williams is a funny guy. It's great to see a newsman be able to do really funny bits while talking to Conan O'Brien or Jon Stewart. But should he be doing it all the time?

Williams is going to be a regular on The Jay Leno Show when it debuts next Monday, introducing a regular segment titled "Stories Not Good Enough For Nightly News". Will it hurt your opinion of him (he got some negative press when he hosted SNL), or can you separate the serious news Brian Williams with the Jay Leno Show Brian Williams?

This is from last week but I think it's worth showing today, because when Brian Williams went on The Daily Show they didn't just talk about politics, they got into a sometimes good-natured, sometimes prickly trade of insults (some of Stewart's digs are clearly serious, but Williams can give as good as he gets). They also mention Walter Cronkite and Billy Mays.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Brian Williams
www.thedailyshow.com

[via TV Newser]

Think about this for a moment: who is the person on television that viewers trust the most to get their news from? Someone from the cable news channels? One of the network news anchors?

Time conducted a survey across the country, asking people who the most trusted newscaster is now that Walter Cronkite is gone. Not really sure why Cronkite matters in this context because he hadn't been a newsman in quite some time, but it's interesting to see all of the statistics by state. You probably won't agree with who came in first with 44%.

This isn't one of those "TV people are so vain!" posts. If you're on television you have to make sure your hair is OK and you have makeup on and all that. I bet even Walter Cronkite wanted to make sure he picked out the right tie in the morning. So this post of David Gregory combing his hair in the middle of a Today story about the moon landing is here not to dump on Gregory but because it's an odd, random tech glitch.

[via TV Newser]

OK, if you were to pick the weekend that Walter Cronkite died, you couldn't have picked a more ironic, odd weekend for it to happen.

Cronkite was a huge fan of the space program, and he was incredibly giddy during CBS news coverage of the first moon landing in 1969. And here we are on the 40th anniversary of that very mission. Reminds me of when Charles Schulz died, hours before the very last Peanuts cartoon ran.

This isn't just the week for prime time Emmy nominations, we also have the nominations for news.

Here's the list of news and documentary Emmy nominations. There are many categories, including several for the cable news channels, but a few of the big nominations include Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin for Outstanding Interview (really?), NBC Nightly News coverage of Tim Russert's death for Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story, 60 Minutes taking three of the four nominations in the Outstanding Feature Story in a News Magazine category (Primetime took the other), and three nominations for The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

[via TV Newser]

Remember when every single person in the world said that Katie Couric would be gone from The CBS Evening News by the end of 2008? HA!

Not only is Couric not going anywhere, her show is actually doing better, thanks in part to the election coverage. It's still in third place, of course (and I think it will probably stay there for quite some time, if not forever), but her ratings are improving. The first week of this month, Couric's show trailed ABC's World News by 1.5 million viewers. That might seem like a lot, but Couric trailed that show by 2.8 million viewers the same week last year. The same thing happened last week compared to the same week in 2008. Hey, at least it's a move in the right direction.

While viewership continues to slip and all that "Katie is leaving after the election" talk still swirls, it looks like the industry actually likes her show.

The CBS Evening News won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast from the Radio Television News Directors Association the other night. ABC won the most awards, including Best Overall, Documentary, Hard news, Spot News Coverage, and Videography. Not really sure what the difference is between Best Newscast and Best Overall, but maybe Best Overall combines all facets of a TV network's news division while Best Newscast just focuses on the 30 minute nightly show that the network does. Either way it's something I'm sure you're going to see in ads for The CBS Evening News.

CBS News also won for Best Web Site (I'd link to the full list of awards but the RTNDA site seems to be down right now.)

[via TV Newser]

There have been approximately 400 stories written about CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric in the past few weeks: she's thinking about leaving, she's getting her lowest ratings ever, etc, etc. And now TV viewers are weighing in on what Katie should do.

A Gallup Poll asked 1,016 adults (I'd love to hear why they come up with such numbers, why they didn't keep calling until it was 1100 or at least stop calling at 1000) what Katie should do. And you know what? 46% of respondents say she should stay as anchor of the show! Where are those viewers when she needs them?

Here are some other results from the poll:

Of course, to paraphrase a former President, it all depends on what the meaning of "future" is.

Making an appearance at the daily noon CBS Evening News staff meeting today, CBS CEO Les Moonves said that despite what you've heard recently, Katie is their anchor today, tomorrow, next week, and long into the future.

Now, let's take that phrase word by word...

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?

Quick answer: no.

Long answer: probably not.

It's always hard to make predictions when it comes to television. A show you think is going to bomb becomes a giant hit that produces several spinoffs (*cough* CSI *cough*). It's even harder with television news, since the landscape is changing so fast these days, with the web playing a bigger and bigger role. But that doesn't stop The Boston Herald from predicting that in five years, Fox and Friends anchor Alisyn Camerota will be asked to take over for Katie Couric on The CBS Evening News.

This must be the day for lists. First the Harris Poll says that Ellen DeGeneres is more popular than Oprah Winfrey, and now the Tyndell Report has announced their list of the 20 most heavily used reporters in 2007.

I'm not sure who I would have thought was number one, though I guess the names Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory come to mind, since they seem to be every newscast. But number one is actually ABC's Jake Tapper, who handles a lot of political reporting for the network. Gregory and Mitchell are on the list, at numbers two and three, while CBS' David Martin is fourth and Nancy Cordes fifth. Cordes is listed as being on both CBS/ABC, so I'm assuming she left CBS and went to ABC? I'm surprised to see Steve Hartman on the list, since I thought he only did the Friday night "Assignment America" series. Maybe he does other reporting.

The full list is after the jump.

"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.

We've been getting a lot of wisdom and insight from our beauty pageant contestants lately. First was the solution to our lack of maps/Africa/the Iraq situation uttered so eloquently by Miss Teen South Carolina, and now we have Miss USA Rachel Smith, who explained what she wants to do with her career in front of the Women In Entertainment Empowerment Network (WEEN?):

"I always wanted to be a reporter - maybe some TV. Who knows? Some serious news - but some modeling, too...I just don't want to end up like Katie Couric. I want people to take me seriously."