Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported what was obvious: That Katie Couric, whose ratings were abysmal, was in trouble and that, sooner or later, CBS would have to do something about it. The date mentioned in the article was “soon after the presidential inauguration”—or right about now! The next few weeks may tell a lot about Couric’s future.

The Couric camp has gone on a massive PR campaign, which this space has tried to keep track of. (See, among others, “Katie Couric, the News Anchor That Nobody Watches™.”) The stories uniformly are upbeat on the (generally unspecified) triumphs Couric’s been cooking up, and don’t get too granular about those pesky ratings. These are puff pieces, and everyone involved knows what the rules are.

For the first, on the day before the United States watched Barack Obama take the oath of office, the Los Angeles Times, which apparently had some reporters around with nothing to do, took the time to give Couric a little tongue bath, just as the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz took the time to do the same for Couric over the Democratic convention. (Both stories answered the journalistic question: What is the anchor of the nation’s fourth most-watched news channel doing these days?)

“There’s no question that Couric emerged from the campaign with more buzz than either of her more-watched rivals,” the LAT assured us.

Buzz is nice! Ratings, however, are slightly different. CBS’s evening newscast remains not just in third place but a distant third place. Indeed, the actual ratings from inauguration day show ABC and NBC with audiences a full fifty percent higher than Couric’s. She barely beat CNN (!) and in fact CNN beat CBS in the 25 to 54 demo blah blah blah. (And that’s just home viewers; CNN has a massive additional viewership in commercial venues and offices, particularly on a Tuesday morning.)

To be fair, Couric’s ratings have been creeping back up, from the mid fives last April to just over 7 now. But note how the LAT had to choose its time-frames carefully to make the case:

Since September, the newscast has averaged 6.5 million viewers, on par with its average last season for those same months. But during the last five weeks, the program has attracted an average of 7.22 million viewers, a 7% hike over the same period last year.

Hmmm… the last five weeks. That would mean people started drifting back to CBS only after the election cycle ended.

New slogan, which CBS can have for free: “Where America Turns When the News is Over.”

The LAT story also has this tidbit, emphasis added:

That’s a marked change from this time last year, when Couric, frustrated with the program’s performance, met with McManus and CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves and discussed possibly leaving her post early, perhaps after the inauguration. The conversation was tabled until after the fall election, but media reports speculated that the anchor was on her way out.

Now, as Barack Obama prepares to take office, few expect Couric to be beating a hasty exit. CBS officials said they haven’t raised the topic again with the anchor.

At the time, both Couric and CBS denied they’d had that discussion; now the officials are plainly saying they did. The story should have noted that they (and Couric) lied at the time, and that the original WSJ story was correct.

Meanwhile, over in Portfolio, Couric plays the sexism card, heavily. She says:

Why do you think so many people had a negative reaction to Hillary Clinton? She’s ambitious. And I think there are still qualities that when women exhibit them are less acceptable than when men naturally exhibit them—like ambition.

Have you suffered from similar problems with your press coverage?

I think there might be some of that. It might be because of my background—that I did a morning show and that people didn’t necessarily think I was a serious person.

Of course, Couric isn’t a serious person (she’s by far the least qualified news anchor we’ve ever seen, barring perhaps Connie Chung), and she’s getting terrible ratings, and yet her press coverage has been disconcertingly positive. Journalists have an affirmative obligation to be intellectually honest; isn’t it a little cheap for her to invent this negative coverage and then attribute it to sexism?

Portfolio doesn’t dwell on that. Check out how the issue of ratings are brought up in this exchange:

Network-news shows are seeing their ratings wither away. Are you disappointed about the ­format’s decreasing influence?

Clearly I knew this was a declining genre when I came here, because I’m not an idiot, you know? I knew that network news was declining, and evening newscasts in particular.

The point is of course true in the larger sense, but the fact remains as well that NBC, for example, is building on its previous top standing … and that Couric, even with her recent bump, has frittered away some forty percent of the audience she had starting out, and has ratings that remain lower than her predecessor’s in the slot. (She covers up the unfortunate post-election ratings increase this way: “But I think during the election cycle we really broke out in an important way.”)

And just to underline the fact that she’s not journalistically fit to hold her chair, she lies to the Porfolio guy as well:

There was talk a while back that suggested you were going to leave the CBS Evening News before your contract was up.

All those stories were really blown out of proportion.

Meaning they were not accurate?

No, they weren’t.

Now the big news is that CBS is going to give Couric some prime-time real estate Wednesday evening to ply her wares, and hopefully try to bring some of the network’s later-evening audience back to her earlier show. This will not of course work, but at some point the network’s over-reliance on forensic cop shows is going to backfire, and not even a returning Billy Petersen will be able to solve the case. You heard it here first: Couric will go up against Jay Leno, nightly at ten.

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Previously in Hitsville:

Katie Couric, the News Anchor That Nobody Watches™
Couric and CBS, lying
Should CBS jettison its news division?
Katie Couric’s ratings hit a new low
Howie hearts Katie
Kurtz the lame
Couric, the debate, and the vaporization of CBS News
Katie Couric, a year later