Next week, Katie Couric will celebrate her second anniversary as anchor of the CBS Evening News.
Given the nature of that tenure, however, "celebrate" might not be quite the right word.
"Can't win for losing," is the phrase Couric used to describe parts of the past two years in an interview last week. "It's been, quite candidly, pretty tough some of the time for me in my new job," she says.
After a cosmic build-up in the summer of 2006 and a huge, first-night tune-in of about 13 million viewers to see the popular star of NBC's Today show assume the chair once held by Walter Cronkite, the wheels quickly started to come off Couric's new show. Viewers fled, and the show's executive producer was fired after only six months. Yet, the slide continued.
In April, with an audience that had shrunk to 5.6 million viewers, reports surfaced that Couric wanted out of her $15-million-a-year contract and would be parting ways with CBS by January. Both Couric and Rick Kaplan, executive producer of CBS Evening News, emphatically deny the reports.
So, why is the 51-year-old newscaster now talking about her rocky ride at CBS? Because she and network executives think they finally have some good news to share.
Timing matters, too. As the new order of network anchors convenes in Denver for its first national convention, the talents of Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson will be on prime-time display starting tomorrow for eight nights across the next two weeks. CBS is presenting Couric in a multimedia showcase that includes a nightly Web cast - hoping to build a little ratings momentum going into the new Nielsen season that starts Sept. 21.
The good news: Couric's broadcast is starting to make some modest audience gains. In Baltimore, for example, the CBS Evening News grew by about 2.2 ratings points or 28,400 viewers from May 2007 to May 2008. The pattern extends to such other mid-sized markets as San Diego; Hartford, Conn.; New Orleans; Pittsburgh; and Kansas City, Mo.
None is New York or Los Angeles, and the gains are not huge, but analysts say that in this era of eroding audiences for all traditional media, a gain of that size in a highly competitive, East Coast market like Baltimore is noteworthy.
"Katie Couric is actually getting ratings - there's a headline," says Douglas Gomery, University of Maryland media economist. "But, seriously, CBS and Couric should be pleased. Who wouldn't take an audience gain of 28,400 viewers these days and feel good about it?"
