Just as its beleaguered producers were searching for ways to stop the haemorrhaging of its audience, CBS Evening News is in the headlines itself, thanks to a sizzling public row about its anchor, Katie Couric, and her slender legs.
Stirring the publicity is Dan Rather, the veteran newsman
who occupied the anchor chair for 24 years until his departure under a journalistic cloud in March 2005.
The programme is in the dumps, he said this week, because under Couric it has gone all soft and fuzzy.
He has stirred a debate not just about Couric but also about the viability of hard news in the celebrity era.
When CBS lured Couric away from her perch as co-host of NBC's hit breakfast show, Today, nine months ago, it agreed to pay her US$15 million a year. Executives thought her star-power and perky persona would at least bring younger and female viewers back to a news programme that was already ailing. Instead the ratings continued to slide. Recently, the slide had become a plunge.
"The mistake," Rather told the MSNBC cable channel, "was to try to bring the Today show ethos to the Evening News, and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."
The assault prompted Leslie Moonves, the head of CBS, to strike back at Rather and accuse him flatly of sexism.
Rather returned fire again, saying his comments were less about Couric and more about Moonves, who "doesn't know about news".
Also wading into the fray, the recently hired chief producer for the news programme, Rick Kapla, denied the bulletin was eschewing hard news.
"I wish Dan was watching more closely," he complained. "A lot of people here are very disappointed with him ... They went through some very dark days with Dan, and they don't like hearing that they're not doing the news. They damn well are."
No one can deny the programme is in trouble, however. It badly trails the competition on ABC and NBC and last month broke a record with the lowest numbers for a network news show in 20 years.
- INDEPENDENT
