No way will next week be a slow news week, even if the world somehow conspires to take a great big nap.
That’s because Katie Couric is coming Tuesday to the “CBS Evening News,” where she will be the first woman to take sole command of a dinner hour national newscast. It’s been quite a feeding frenzy already, but now comes the main course.
What will she wear? How will she do? What will be new? “It’s not all about me, basically, I guess is the best way to answer it,” Couric says in a recent teleconference with TV critics.
“But as an anchor, I am going to have a presence. There’s no getting around that … I just really am interested in building a quality newscast. I don’t expect there’s going to be a huge ratings surge.”
That’s her story, and she probably should stick to it. Frankly, though, not much of a ratings surge is required for the “Evening News” to reach parity with Brian Williams’ No.1-ranked “NBC Nightly News” or Charles Gibson’s runner-up “World News” on ABC. The CBS broadcast, which made slow but steady gains under interim anchor Bob Schieffer, is within a decent-sized ratings ripple of the top spot.
And it would only take a ratings burp to slip into second place, according to the latest available report card from Nielsen Media Research.
For the week of Aug. 14-18, NBC’s flagship newscast averaged 7.82 million viewers, followed by ABC (7.29 million) and CBS (6.82 million). That’s not much of a gap. Curiosity alone should propel Couric to a relatively easy victory on her opening night.
The former “Today” mainstay says she’s been “chomping at the bit a little bit” since leaving NBC on May 31.
It’s been “very strange,” she says, “for me to watch the major news events unfold in my pajamas. That’s in the morning. I’m not like Howard Hughes.”
She initially passed the time with some time off. Then came a six-city “listening tour” jaunt, including a visit to Denver. The past several weeks have been crunch time, filled with wardrobe fittings, rehearsals, promotional spots, interviews with 50 local CBS station anchors, roadwork for future “60 Minutes” stories and homework for Wednesday’s Sept. 11-themed special, “Five Years Later – How Safe Are We?” For the latter prime-time program she will interview President Bush at the White House.
“Sometimes I feel like human chum,” Couric, 49, says of her breakneck schedule.
She also recently learned that “news” travels fast, even if it’s unfounded. The NBC-owned celebrity rag “Access Hollywood” reported on its website in July that Couric would not travel to the Middle East as an “Evening News” anchor. “As a single parent with two children, that’s something I won’t be doing,” she supposedly said.
“Access Hollywood” eventually retracted its report, saying it was an old quote from a May 30 interview in which Couric commented on serious injuries suffered in Iraq by CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier.
At a July 16 “summer press tour” interview with TV critics, Couric said she’d willingly jet to the Middle East if “it’s going to serve the story … I think it
really depends on the situation and what’s happening.”
The bogus “Access Hollywood” story nonetheless flew all over the Internet for several days. Couric’s CBS newscast will have several Web components, including a live simulcast. Still, she worries that it’s increasingly difficult to apply the brakes.
“I think as journalists we have to be very careful of the information,” she says in the teleconference. “It struck me that repeating has sometimes replaced reporting. And it spreads like wildfire and then becomes fodder for national debate … It’s an important sort of red flag for all of us.”
Any trips to international or domestic hot spots will be carefully contemplated, she says. Knowledgeable on-the-scene correspondents despise nothing more than a grandstanding, “Big-Footing” anchor with more ego than expertise.
“I’m not interested in just standing somewhere in a flak jacket and saying, ‘Look, I’m here,”‘ Couric says.
She’ll be fronting a new “Couric & Company” blog as part of her expanding duties at CBS. For now, though, put the emphasis on “& Company.”
Blogging is “probably No.6 on my to-do list, after going to the grocery store,” she says. “The blog is going to be important to me, but it’s not top-of-mind right now.”
She’s set to visit at least two CBS properties, “Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Early Show,” before making her “Evening News” debut. But “I hate the word ‘synergistic,”‘ Couric says. “It’s so five minutes ago.”
Up-to-the-minute decisions will be made not only on what stories to run, but what outfits to wear. She’s more than a little sick of wardrobe and hairstyle questions, but “Access Hollywood,” “Extra” and “Entertainment Tonight” certainly aren’t.
“I’m going to pretty much look the same way, unfortunately the way I’ve always looked,” Couric says. “I have no plans to get a crew cut or shop at Brooks Brothers. I’m going to wear things that I think are attractive and not too distracting. Hopefully I’ll have good hygiene.”
