Couric Hell

Drudge has posted Katie Couric's latest ratings and it is turning out to be a disaster for CBS.

NEW YORK CITY
WABC 7.1
WNBC 5.3
WCBS 3.7

LOS ANGELES

KABC 5.9
KNBC 3.1
KCBS 1.5

WASHINGTON, DC

NBC 9.3
ABC 7.8
CBS 2.5

I don't think the problem is necessarily Couric herself, it is the fact that it is network news. I used to watch the NBC evening news pretty regularly up through the late 1990s. However, the advent of the internet has changed my news habits. I haven't watched a network evening news cast for years. The only newscast I watch now if at all is Foxnews with Brit Hume and local news.

The main problem for network evening newscasts is that younger people no longer watch. The average age for the network newscasts is now 60. With this demographic, it is hard to understand why CBS replaced Bob Shieffer, a 60 year old himself, with bubbly Couric. There is also a problem with liberal bias in the network newscast. No matter how much they want to claim they are neutral, any slightly conservative person recognizes the obvious bias. Thus, why watch it if you can get less biased news from other sources (for example I am tired of hearing from the networks how Hezbollah is so great because they set up schools and clinics).

Maybe CBS was trying to attract viewers of NBC's Today show who may be younger. However, my wife, who is a watcher of the Today show, said that Couric's depature did not motivate her to switch to CBS news.

In the end it will be slow death for network news. I think that the news business is returning to the more partisan format that existed prior to World War II and that exists in Europe today. I also think a more partisan format will lead to more truth telling in the end.