Dear Tom:

You’re the man. One of our sharpest pop-culture observers. So how did you fall under the odd gossamer aura that somehow seems to envelop Katie Couric every time a member of the media gets near?

Here are a few of the things I thought were weird in your story today, Tom:

1) The lede. “How about a big hand for the little lady?” you begin. Couric is not a serious newsperson, but even she doesn’t deserve such a condescending opening.

2) You refer to the “merciless pummeling” Couric has allegedly been getting in the media. Got any examples? I’ve been noticing a lot of puff pieces. From the Post, the NYT, the LAT. Not so much with the pummeling.

3) Tom, there’s too much selective citing of things that make Couric look good, but not enough skepticism. Example: You mention right up front that the CBS Evening News was “a newscast that had a lock on third place long before Couric took it over.” But you don’t note that Couric has taken it down even from that point! (Not to mention the many millions of new folks she brought to the broadcast to check her out originally—who then went somewhere else.)

4) Now, consider this construction:

If Couric stands a chance of elevating the newscast to second or first place in the nightly ratings, one reason may be that she’s finally the right anchor for the times.

First, let’s be honest: She has no chance of doing that; even with her recent advances, she’s several full rating points behind her competition. I’ll talk more about the numbers in a minute, but right now she’d have to increase her viewership by forty percent just to tie NBC.

Now, as for being the right anchor for the times, as I noted yesterday, her little ratings boost is of very recent vintage. Let’s think: What happened in the last month or two that might have affected her ratings? Oh, yeah—the election! After the election, after the stock market crash, after we got a new guy in to deal with the problem. Now people are going back to Couric. (And again, let’s remember we’re talking about a trifling number, but whatever.) Maybe it’s ’cause they didn’t really need Katie Couric for, you know, actual news.

5) Now, about that primetime special last night:

Couric reported Part 1 of an “exclusive” shocker series about domestic violence committed against spouses and girlfriends by troops returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. She gave this troubling story not “a woman’s touch” but the attention of a good reporter.

As is all too frequently the case with TV news, what she really gave attention to was the New York Times, which has doggedly been following this story for years, most recently and wrenchingly in a front page piece three weeks ago.  (“A focus on violence by returning G.I.s,” by Lizette Alvarez and Dan Frosch.) Do you think maybe Katie “I don’t even write my own blog” Couric got the idea there?

And, Tom, did you really make this observation? “The segment was labeled ‘Katie Couric Investigates’ to help raise her profile even higher.” Shouldn’t it have been called “Katie Couric reads the New York Times”?

6) OK, let’s talk ratings. You, like the LAT the other day, zero in on Couric’s recent uptick. But I noticed you didn’t crunch the numbers yourself, instead attributing them to the network:

NBC’s Brian Williams and his nightly newscast continue to score an emphatic first place in the Nielsens, with about 10.1 million viewers, followed by Charles Gibson and ABC with 9.1 million and Couric and CBS at 7.2 million. But Couric’s numbers are up about 5 percent over the same period as last year, CBS says.

But here, for example, is an NYT piece on evening news ratings from exactly one year ago:

In the extremely tight ratings race between the two leading evening news broadcasts, ABC’s “World News With Charles Gibson” last week edged past its rival, NBC’s “Nightly News With Brian Williams,” for the first time in eight weeks. Nielsen estimated that the ABC newscast drew 9.8 million viewers, its highest average in nearly a year and slightly more than the 9.6 million who tuned in to NBC. […]  Last week CBS’s “Evening News With Katie Couric” remained a distant third (7.13 million).

In other words, NBC is up five percent, ABC is down five percent, and Couric has an increase that is a rounding error.

7) Not having bothered to cite examples of the “merciless pummeling,” you get around to acknowledging the recent puff pieces:

“I am cognizant of it,” she says of the recent rash of pro-Couric reports, as opposed to dump-Couric stories. “I think if it’s true, the reason is partially that people are getting used to me in this role. And I’ve become increasingly comfortable in it.”

Tom, isn’t the “recent rash of pro-Couric reports” because of a concentrated PR campaign?

8 ) Then we get this:

Why did it take two years (after an initial, short-lived leap out of the starting gate) for Couric even to begin to catch on?

Here again, Tom, she’s not “catching on.” Even after her celebrated Sarah Palin interviews, her ratings didn’t improve. She was getting ratings in the high sixes when she and CBS began discussing her departure last year. (You refer to those as “rumors”—kinda of a cheesy way to refer to the WSJ’s big scoop, which was confirmed both by the Post at the time and as recently as this week by the LAT.)

All in all, Tom, a very disappointing piece. Here’s how your story should have begun:

Six months ago, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News might well part ways after the inauguration of the new president.

That time has now come.

Couric and her camp have accordingly embarked on a very big PR campaign to help her keep her job. But a close reading of her ratings show that, after a year that saw her draw the lowest numbers in the storied news organization’s history, she has made only modest inroads in her bottom-basement standings. Worse, the increase she has seen dates from just the last few weeks, underlining the fact that Couric could not draw viewers to her show during one of the most consequential, news-filled years of our lifetime.

———–

Previously in Hitsville:

Katie Couric—Where America Turns When the News Is Over™
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