… Has there been a more anticipated night of evening news broadcasts!?!
… Knowing full well that Katie Couric was making her CBS debut tonight, I was eyeing the clock during a last-minute meeting at work and got home about 15 minutes ahead of the 5:30 start …made my supper (a bountiful salad) … and was on the couch in time to watch …
Brian Williams on NBC, of course. God Bless the DVR.
The NBC broadcast, to me at least, is clearly the more superior one. The focus is on news that matters to the common man. The NBC crew started the newscast with the new oil find in the Gulf Coast. Then some news from today’s Bush speech. And a segment about Ford giving up day-to-day operations of the motor corp. that bares his name. And they gave a fascinating story about the Army shunning a tool designed to combat RGBs. All of it came packaged with in-depth reporting and interviews, presented as news that should matter to me and you …
I kept wondering what, if anything, he would say, and as he closed out the newscast, sure enough, Brian welcomed his former colleague to the timeslot and wished her luck, but not too much of it …
A sigh of fulfillment.
Then, I curiously switched on the DVR to watch Katie’s debut …
… She looked good. And her delivery was alright, but as one story noted today, any trained person can read a teleprompter and deliver the news …
Other than that …
eh.
Katie and the heads at CBS are clearly shooting for the younger demographic. That was obvious by the endless plugs to go to CBSNews.com, to see more news, to leave opinions and even to make a suggestion for how Kati should end each night’s broadcast …
I thought ‘Hope to see you back here tomorrow night’ was just fine, Katie. Stick with that.
But C’mon. The portion about Vanity Fair getting the first pictures of Baby Suri made me want to throw up. If I wanted that, I’d flip over to “Access Hollywood” (but I won’t because I can hardly stand celebrity gossip …). Peter Gabriel’s “hit song,” as Katie so obviously pointed out, “In Your Eyes” was equally out of place introducing a segment about a Wisconsin man who gives paintings to orphaned kids -- which, by the way, along with Lara Logan’s face-to-face encounter with the Taliban, was the most interesting piece in the otherwise dull broadcast. And I didn’t get the new “Free Speech” segment either -- it played like any other talking head or political monologue across TV land …
… along with a 10-second blip about the Ford story and most of the solid news, Couric and her crew shoved the Gulf Coast oil find to the middle of the broadcast and even then it was portrayed as a savior to the country’s gas crisis, while Williams and company kept it in perspective by warning it won’t solve all our oil problems and reminding us it’s still four miles deep into the ocean floor …
… so call me a crusty old news junkie who likes it plain and simple …
… I may stick around for a few more nights to watch Katie …
… But I got a feeling Brian’s going to remain my man, whether you know who he is or not …
* * *
In case you missed it, and while I was still sticking with Williams, here's some of the good reads about how it all went down this summer at CBS and ABC...
April ...
a Katie Couric says she's leaving ‘Today’
a Face up to the perky: Katie Couric can't escape the adjective
a CBS' Public Eye Proves Partially Blind
May ...
a Katie Couric leaves 'Today' with tears, gratitude ... or as The Baltimore Sun called it, " a three-hour orgy of nostalgia and Katie-worship that showcased some of the best and worst of network television news."
July ...
a CBS begins promoting Couric's debut
a Katie Couric on the hustings
And meanwhile at ABC ...
a Charles Gibson to anchor 'World News Tonight'
a Morning and night, ABC's Gibson is on the air
a Good ol' Charlie, our favorite anchor dad
a Saunders: Gibson at home with anchor role
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