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...anchor to have a bit of success, was the anti-Couric: avuncular, male, older (he replaced Elizabeth Vargas, two decades his junior) and unreliant on innovations like Op-Ed segments. Hiring him implied an entirely different view of TV news and its future. CBS was programming for the viewers network news wanted. ABC was programming to keep the viewers network news already had, for as long as the Grim Reaper would permit...
Looks like ABC made the right pick. Of course, network news has a complex ecology. Couric may have been a poor fit, CBS's changes too major or too minor. Gibson may be doing well because Couric dislodged NBC fans who then sampled him, or because many ABC affiliates have Oprah before the local news...
Regardless, after all the money and attention spent on Couric, it will be much harder for a network exec to justify trying to widen the larger news audience. The journalistic lesson of Gibson's success and Couric's fizzling is that you can do well in the ratings with simple, unflashy news, and that's fine. But the business lesson is that trying to find new viewers--in the face of generational change, technological rivals and changing work and family schedules--to replace dying ones is pointless. TV-news analyst Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the Tyndall Report website, told...
There's an alternative, though. As Tyndall notes, the networks--which still have a bigger news audience than cable--may find a future online. But to make that transition, they'll have to be open to changing their flagship evening shows, even shrinking them by losing longtime viewers with shocks to the system like Couric. They may have to die a little to be reborn. I don't blame evening-news stalwarts for spending their evenings with Charlie. But if they love their network news, they should keep their fingers crossed for Katie...
...sanctuary for bin Laden and his lieutenants. While members of Pakistan's intelligence services have long been suspected of being in league with the Taliban, the Bush Administration has consistently praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his cooperation in rooting out and apprehending members of bin Laden's network. But the Talibanization of the borderlands--and their role in arming and financing insurgents in Afghanistan--has renewed doubts about whether Musharraf still possesses the will to face down the jihadists...