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The news can no longer be corralled by three anchors in three big chairs. Yet corralling the news is all the nightly newscasts are good for. “Here’s what you should know for today,” they say and sometimes even add “and here’s what you should think about it.” That worked when they were the gatekeepers. But the gates have been smashed, obliterated and all the anchors are left to do is hold up splintered remnants of what was and pretend they are showing us “the news.”
Couric Can’t Save Evening News
~ By Alan Stewart Carl
So the sprightly Katie Couric is taking the big seat at CBS Evening News. Now people are asking, does she have the gravitas for it? Does she have the skill? Can she muster the sturdy gaze of courage necessary when the news turns bad?
My only question is: does it matter?
The network evening news is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Yes, somewhere around a combined 30 million people still watch the three network’s evening newscasts but, then again, a lot of people still own VCRs too -- doesn’t mean there’s a future in it.
The fact is, the evening news has been in a ratings freefall for over two decades and there is absolutely no reason to believe Couric or anyone else can convince us to go back to the good-old-days of serious-voiced oracles rationing out the day’s news in 3-minute bundles. That time has passed. The news is no longer a 30-minute experience. Now it’s a constant, unstoppable stream of stories and opinions available from multiple 24-hour cable news stations and innumerable Internet news sites.
The news can no longer be corralled by three anchors in three big chairs. Yet corralling the news is all the nightly newscasts are good for. “Here’s what you should know for today,” they say and sometimes even add “and here’s what you should think about it.” That worked when they were the gatekeepers. But the gates have been smashed, obliterated and all the anchors are left to do is hold up splintered remnants of what was and pretend they are showing us “the news.”
Not surprisingly, this development horrifies some of the old masters of the form. The great Walter Cronkite, in an interview last year, said of the decline in traditional news sources:
"The fact that readership of newspapers is down and the viewing of news on television is down -- in the network form, that is -- with that, we should consider that democracy is in danger,” he said. “As old Thomas Jefferson said, 'the nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never will and never can be.' The problem we’ve got with newspapers and television today, television news, is, I think, the fact that the public is too ignorant to understand the important news of the day. It wants to be entertained rather than informed."
There you have it. The problem isn’t obsolescence of the form. The problem is that we the people are too ignorant to see the importance in what the network evening news deems important. The blind egotism of that statement is staggering and while Cronkite does not represent those running the three network evening newscasts, can we really doubt that his opinions are still quite prevalent among producers and anchors?
I really don’t think there is a way to save the network evening news. But if they want a fighting chance, the first step is realizing they are but a small piece of the modern news environment. They cannot be the gatekeepers, the opinion-makers. They have to be satisfied with being something less. Maybe by reducing their expectations they can improve their appeal. Maybe.
But my gut tells me Ms. Couric has just stepped aboard a slowly but unstoppably sinking ship.
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