Couric Watch: Ratings plummet!
The Katie Couric Media Onslaught, charted here with alacrity, has slowed to a trickle. There was that appearance on Letterman last week, I guess, and this week just a Very Important Award from the USC J School, for those “extraordinary and persistent” Sarah Palin interviews.
When last we checked in with Couric’s actual ratings, we saw, despite all the spinning, squinting and selective citing of the data, her ratings were stuck at about 7 million.
The irony was that this was better than they had been during the campaign, which did not lack news interest. As Hitsville’s analysis proved, viewers really didn’t want Couric when actual historic events were taking place.
But, after the election was over, and after the financial meltdown had been addressed, then people felt they could go back to superficial Couric.
But now, it seems, they’ve checked her out again and … they’ve decided they really don’t like her that much. TV Newser helpfully collects the last few weeks of ratings here.
Couric had 7.2 million viewers the week of Feb. 2, coming off the inauguration high.
The next week, Feb. 9?
6.75 million.
Feb. 16? 6.73 million.
Feb. 23? 6.44 million—down for four weeks in a row, TV Newser notes.
And March 2? 6.44 million again.
She’s lost ten percent of her audience in a month, and this after the biggest PR assault the industry has seen in a long time.
Now, this number is above her bottom basement mark of some 5 million two years ago, but it’s not too much above the 5.9 million she had when all that talk started about her leaving the anchor position last April.
———–
Previously in Hitsville:
Paging Katie Couric!
Dear Tom Shales
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
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To be entirely fair, why not show the ratings of ABC and NBC’s competing nightly broadcasts over the same period? Although I believe that Couric’s CBS broadcast would still come in last, I wonder if the other two broadcast network’s nightly news shows are experiencing a similar drop in ratings.
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[…] Confidential to Tom Shales and Howard Kurtz: Katie Couric’s ratings are in the tank again! Couric Watch: Ratings plummet! Paging Katie Couric! Dear Tom Shales Katie Couric—Where America Turns When the News Is Over™ Katie Couric, the […]