No news is bad news

Now that Katie Couric's days as a network anchor appear to be numbered, it's time to guess who will take her place. Anderson Cooper? Harry Smith? Ron Burgundy?

Here's one scenario you may not have contemplated: "The CBS Evening News With ... Nobody."

Most media analysts will tell you the era of three network news programs won't last much longer. ABC, NBC and CBS lost 1.2 million viewers in just the past year. The average age of viewers is 60.

But how could CBS be the most likely to give up? This is the home of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, "60 Minutes." But it's also the place that has committed one colossal mistake after another, starting with the decision in the late 1980s by then-owner Laurence Tisch not to get into the cable business, passing up an opportunity to spread production costs and create valuable, alternative platforms.

This is the network that fed Dan Rather's hubris to the point where it didn't develop a deep bench of potential heirs. This is the network that temporarily paired Rather with Connie Chung, the most unlikely couple in TV history, at least until David Spade starting dating Heather Locklear. This is the network now in talks with CNN to take over much of its international coverage, once a point of pride.

I did believe the brass made a wise decision in 2006 to bring in Couric, even if she cost $15 million a year, about twice what NBC's Brian Williams pulls down. Even more promising was the show's concept: a softer, feature-oriented half-hour with longer interviews, more family-friendly stories and from-the-hip editorials from unlikely sources. The approach failed to take off after less than a year, and the gamblers folded their cards, returning the "CBS Evening News" to its more traditional format. What we're left with is three cookie-cutter programs and a frustrated anchor who's not able to play to her strengths.

It's easy to blame Couric for CBS' downward spiral in the ratings. It's also unfair.

"I think she's getting a raw deal," said Aaron Brown, a former Minnesotan who knows a thing or two about raw deals. When he took over as the face of CNN in 2001, he offered a more contemplative nightly news program, one that didn't hesitate to take a deep breath in the middle of a broadcast and try to figure out just what the heck was really going on. The cable outlet showed him the door in 2005, making way for the sexier, slicker Anderson Cooper.

Brown, a teacher at Arizona State University, thinks the Couric philosophy was a sound one. It was the pace that was wrong.

"CBS got way ahead of its audience," he said. "You have to make changes more carefully. I know they wanted to make a big splash, but big changes are not easy. You have to incrementally move the audience along. To me, they had enough on their plate bringing Katie to the plate. That was enough of a change. I would have moved more slowly."

WCCO news director Scott Libin argues that it's much harder these days for the brass to stick to their guns if the audience doesn't immediately respond favorably.

"We can't afford to be as arrogant as we used to be," he said. "Not that you want to pander, either, but somewhere between arrogance and pandering is the appropriate response."

No matter what CBS does now, it appears that Couric will be gone by the time a new president is inaugurated, if not sooner. One week last month, the show drew only 5.4 million people, the lowest viewership in modern times.

Libin points out that while the number is low in comparison with the glory years, it's still significant compared with cable-news programs.

"I'm not ready to join the legions who are once again declaring network news to be dead," he said.

Neither am I. But I do wonder if we live in an age where we need three competing news programs that are more or less the same. There are too many alternatives out there eager to satisfy the less traditional viewer.

That may not be a reason for die-hard news fans to rejoice, but in the words of Cronkite, that's the way it is.

njustin@startribune.com • 612-673-7431