Back in January, Tom Shales asked for a big hand for the news anchor he called “the little lady”—why, her ratings were up 5 percent.

Around the same time, the Los Angeles Times discovered that if, with a little help from Katie Couric’s PR department, you selectively cited an arbitrarily delimited time frame, you could make the case that Couric’s ratings were up seven percent.

As for Howard Kurtz, well, he traditionally just adds on an extra million viewers to whatever ratings Couric is getting at any given point.

Anyway, today, far from the PR madding crowd, Couric, the News Anchor Nobody Watches™, has been plugging along, riding that crest of positive coverage … and watching her ratings drop—week after week after week after week.

As we saw after Shales wrote his piece, Couric’s ratings had actually grown—not in the year-over-year case he and the CBS flacks were trying to make, but just week-to-week.

The only trouble with that scenario is that this was just after the election was over. It suggested that viewers came to Couric only when they didn’t need actual news any more.

And in any case, it meant merely that her ratings climbed back up to the miserable place she’d been a year previously—a bit over 7 million viewers.

Since then? Well, after the PR blitz from earlier this year, the TV audience got a chance to sample her wares again, and have not liked what they see. In March she dropped into the 6’s, and in April she dipped into the 5’s. Three weeks ago she dropped to 5.7 million viewers; two weeks ago she hit 5.6 million; and last week, according to ratings figures just released, she sank to 5.4 million.

The WSJ reported more than a year ago that CBS was talking about what to do with Couric after the inauguration. In fairness to Couric, it’s been months since then, and CBS hasn’t dumped her yet.

But when she’s dropping 100,000 to 200,000 viewers a week, how long can this last? Why are our intrepid national media critics suddenly silent on the subject of Katie Couric’s precipitous decline?

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Previously in Hitsville:

Couric Watch: Ratings plummet!
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