Note: I have put the most egregious sections in bold –
with notations in italics.
-Nalder
March 13, 2006
David Carr
A Ship Leaks, but She
Wants to Anchor It
KATIE COURIC has taken some hits to her Q rating for her big
salary and perceived imperiousness. More recently, she has displayed some
professional restlessness, making it clear that she would like to trade her throne
in the morning for the anchor chair in the evening. And CBS seems to be a
willing partner.
I spent last Friday morning with Ms. Couric
— well, O.K., I watched the "Today" show along with more than six
million other viewers — and I can't say I blame her. Yes, she got to talk to
Tim Russert about port security, but that was the
Speaking of which, why is there such endless interest in who
will be host of the evening news when fewer and fewer people actually watch it?
Evening news shows have lost nearly half their audience in the last 25 years,
while the morning shows continue to storm along, collectively generating more
than $1 billion in revenues each year, more than twice what the evening news
pulls in. Demographically, the evening news is a village of 60-year-olds, not
quite the sweet spot for most advertisers.
Ms. Couric has understandably attracted a lot of attention,
because the evening anchors who have sat in those chairs and held our hands
through wars, terror attacks and natural cataclysms have almost always been
men. Part of it is practical — networks need a Zeus to maintain order in the
pantheon — and much of it is testosterone. If this a
war, then everyone likes having a general around. Or at least, someone who
looks like one. [Nalder
note: it is just assumed – without any proof or reasoning that “testosterone”
is needed to “maintain order” amid chaos, not to mention the idea that
"looking like a general" means being male. This really says more
about the reporter than about Ms. Couric]
Not to be outdone (or precisely to avoid being outdone),
Diane Sawyer, another gold-plated morning talent, had made noises to friends
about going to the evening as well. But it seems much less likely that Ms.
Sawyer, of "Good Morning America," will make the move. ABC would have
to bypass her co-host, Charles Gibson, a very qualified candidate for ABC's
evening newscast, who has already played the good soldier by continuing to wake
up and do his existing job. And Ms. Sawyer would be leaving the morning field
at the precise moment when there might be a significant opportunity for ABC to
overtake a Couric-less "Today" show.
For Ms. Couric, the CBS anchor
post would mean better hours, less money (probably) and a heap more gravitas.
In return, CBS would procure the services of a television pro, a longtime crowd
favorite — Ms. Couric's middle name seems to be
"perky" in news accounts — and a huge burst of publicity.
The risks, however, would be substantial. The route to the
anchor chair generally travels through a series of foreign and political
assignments, weekend tryouts and then, finally, when someone dies or falters, a
shot at the bigs. Ms. Couric
has usually been the one to get the interview with the president's wife, not
the president, and the only war zone she has reported from is the long-running
one among the morning shows.
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the
Project for Excellence in Journalism, says it is less of a reach than people
realize.
"Everyone seems to be forgetting that Tom Brokaw was the
host of the 'Today' show before he became the anchor of the nightly news,"
he said. "One of the questions at the time was whether he had sufficient
gravitas to be an anchor."
Will the head-and-shoulders shot suit Ms. Couric? The two jobs are remarkably different, with the
morning job seeming to be the much more difficult one. The evening anchor is
generally on for little more than five minutes, doing hand-offs and
interviewing experienced network hands. The news is the star.
In the morning, Ms. Couric is on
for three hours at a stretch, pivoting between dead Marines and cute dolphins
at marine parks. Her husky giggle, which
has been music to audiences for almost 15 years, would not get much of a
workout at night, and her legs, admired everywhere, would
disappear under the anchor desk. [This
one is so over the top that it needs little comment – but – can you imagine
such a statement about Charlie Gibson’s pecs or any
other such sexualizing? Plus – “giggle” in addition to “perky”, mentioned
a few paragraphs up are both terms generally used to describe children or at
least teens – dismissive. Even male comedians – say John Stewart, for
example, would rarely be described as “perky” or as “gigglers” – even if they
are.]
But with so much in the bank — Ms. Couric's
last contract reportedly paid her $65 million over four and a half years — and
thousands of cooking segments behind her, it is not hard to see why she would
want to try a new day part, one that would not require her to get up at 3 a.m.
Perhaps a more interesting question is why CBS, in the race to see who will be king of an
entropic realm, seems so eager to sign up the queen of morning television. [note the
assumption that the search is for a “king” – so by definition, any woman would
be an anomaly. ] Bob Schieffer, the
"temporary" host of "The CBS Evening News," has nicely
stabilized and expanded the audience in his year in the chair. Part of the reason that viewers have
embraced Mr. Schieffer, who is 69, is that he is good
at his job, but he also fulfills the need not just for a newsreader, but also
for a broadcast uncle, someone who lets us know that regardless of what
happened on any given day, things will be O.K. and he'll be back tomorrow.
[What about a “broadcast aunt” to assure us that “things will be O.K. and
she’ll be back tomorrow? It’s just outside of the realm of possibility for
Mr. Carr – not even a consideration.]
Except he won't. The times when we
all gathered around a broadcast campfire for stories from Walter Cronkite are
past, regardless of how hard network executives wish for them. The culture is
far too atomized to coalesce around a triumvirate of broadcast lions. Networks
can make all the moves they want and spend gobs of money, but they will be
fulfilling a need that no longer exists.
Andrew Tyndall, media analyst, said that evening news
anchors were simply less valuable than morning hosts. "In the morning, you
are on for two or three hours and what you do can have an enormous impact on
the size of the audience, depending on whether they like what you do," he
said. "In the evening, people want to know what happened, not so much the
personality that is telling them.
"Katie Couric's ambition is
totally understandable," he said. "What is more difficult to understand
why CBS would feel that Couric of all people is the
one who is uniquely qualified to do that job."
Sure, nothing gets
competitive juices flowing at the networks like an anchor war. But the fact
that networks seem willing to concede that the best man for the job is clearly
a woman means that it just isn't the same job anymore. [See, if it were still an important position, “the best man for the
job” would be a man – obviously!! How sad for the network that they have to
consider a woman for a man’s job. How far they have
fallen.]
[It is also worth
noting that the only “experts” quoted here are male. He also makes
multiple references to “women’s work” sort of coverage that Couric
has been doing – children’s songs about dinosaurs, fashion, cooking segments,
covering the “President’s wife” (not even using the title “First Lady”, but the
even more derivative “President’s wife”). In contrast, he writes about
qualified reporters covering “manly” topics such as wars and being
“lions”. He’s equating gravitas with manliness, qualifications with
testosterone and irrelevance and weakness with femininity. It almost makes
me want to equate boorishness with masculinity.]
[Another point –
imagine a similar article written about race rather than gender – where the assumptions
were about how a white person was so obviously more qualified and that the
network news was clearly in disarray if they were considering a black
broadcaster for the job. Would it EVER make it past the editors to be
printed in the pages of the NYT in 2006?]