On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 5:57 PM, M-D November <mdnovem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, good. Cancel all world news for Thursday, May 19 - Katie's leaving and > needs the 30 min to look back fondly! > > Ugh. I'm sorry - a ego-stroking 'retrospective' might be appropriate when > you spend a decade+ on a 2-hour morning show with lots of Wacky Hijinks(TM), > but not for an evening newscast. > http://gawker.com/5803743/watch-katie-couric-sign-off-of-the-cbs-evening-news-for-the-final-time It was only 5 minutes ("Five Years in Five Minutes") - but it did a great job of capturing Katie's brand of me-journalism. Two illustrative elements: In the first part, prior to the music video portion, she ends it with the recent royal wedding, not the announcement about bin Laden - that really captures the "Today-ification" that she tried to bring to the Evening News; her sign-off thanks her viewers for joining her on the incredible journey - illustrating how her intent really is to be a personality that viewers identify with, rather than just a reporter of the day's events. The Katie-cast got much better over time - mostly as it became more like a traditional network newscast. Even so, the idea of having Katie Couric anchoring the Evening News was a huge mistake; she was not well suited to the role, and clearly never thought she was. What she thought she could do was reshape the Evening News into something that she was well suited for - a kind of personal video blog for each week day. She will be much better suited for the next thing she tries - some sort of Oprah Walters hybrid on ABC. Meanwhile, CBS News seems to be headed in a better direction - less of a cult of high wattage, high profile, high cost personality, more of a focus on reporting the news in no nonsense fashion. If the broadcast evening news format is going to morph, it will be better if it moves in the direction of some kind of 60 Minutes hybrid, not Today Show hybrid. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
