What Does It All Mean?

So much has been written about the historical significance of Katie Couric becoming the first woman to anchor a network newscast solo that some of the bigger picture has been left obscured. No doubt, the decision to make a woman the face of a network news division is an important milestone, one many argue is way overdue. But Americans are hardly deprived of a female presence in their television news diets – whether co-anchors on local stations, on the network morning shows, serious correspondents reporting from war zones or even co-anchors of evening newscasts. Beyond the loud crashing of the great glass ceiling, what else does this episode tell us? Here are a few of my thoughts and opinions (i.e., label this “commentary”).

While we don’t know all the details of Couric’s contract with CBS, it’s safe to assume the network is making a hefty investment in bringing her over. It’s not just her salary they’re committing to but all the bells and whistles that accompany a change of anchors – not to mention a good chunk of the news division’s prestige. For all the soothsayers who’ve seen the end of network news barreling towards us, this move signals that maybe there’s some feistiness left in the networks. If they’re going to go down, it may be with a fight rather than a whimper.

Last year, CBS CEO Les Moonves set off some alarms within the news division and journalism in general when he spoke to the New York Times Magazine and mentioned the "Naked News" as a model for a news broadcast. That comment and other quotes attributed to him were widely talked about and some feared that in looking to revamp the “Evening News,” CBS would replace hard news with entertainment. The decision to hire Couric should help soothe concerns about a "Naked News" model. Sure, “Today” is much different than the “Evening News,” and there is as much (or more) footage of Couric in segments with pigeons on her head as there is of her interviewing world leaders. But she does bring some solid journalistic credentials, as did Tom Brokaw when he made the jump from “Today” to the anchor desk of NBC's "Nightly News."

More profound than any seismic changes in the news model may be the changes for the institution that is CBS. Tradition and continuity have dominated CBS News throughout its history. William Paley, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Mike Wallace, Dan Rather (yes, Dan Rather) and Bob Schieffer are a few of the names occupying a place in the pantheon of the Tiffany Network. It’s probably the single greatest collection yet in the relatively young history of broadcast journalism. Almost all of them were of the CBS culture. How will Couric fit into the lineage?

I don’t think anyone is afraid the new anchor will come in with an eye of destroying tradition. But for an organization steeped in continuity, any change might be viewed nervously. For all the lofty perceptions of storied tradition though, CBS also has a history of change (from radio to television to the Internet) and of innovation (“60 Minutes” invented a new genre of news for example). Correspondents, producers, editors, writers and anyone else involved with the “Evening News” are surely asking what this means for them. It’s a natural reaction but one prone to miss positive change when it happens. Whether this move ultimately represents that kind of change or not won’t be known for months or years but it would seem a mistake to prejudge the outcome based solely on the past.

There has also been a lot of talk about the desire to attract a younger audience to the “Evening News.” I’ll leave it to people whose jobs depend on such things to hash all that out. The reason I work with words instead of numbers is because I find spell-check a little easier to use than a calculator and I have no idea whether Katie Couric will bring in more young viewers or not. I realize that advertisers pay more for younger viewers but typically they seem to me less interested in news in general, and broadcast news in particular. At the great risk of exposing my ignorance on the subject, I’ve always thought the point was to attract more viewers overall, not just more viewers in one particular demographic category. It’s a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats thing. But that’s just one of many reasons I’m not running a network.

Whether the “Evening News” will attract more overall viewers with Couric at the helm is obviously an open question. I suspect it will, at least at first. The long-term audience picture is more important and that brings me to my final point. After the initial hoopla has all died down (and granted, we might be talking months here), all this probably means more to CBS than to broadcast journalism as a whole.

The technological changes – the Internet, iPod, on-demand video on multiple formats and things we’ve probably yet to see – are changing the nature of news in more profound ways than a new anchor ever could. It’s a changing landscape and everyone seems to be scrambling to figure it out and keep up. If Couric and a newer version of the “Evening News” fit into this new world, CBS will naturally benefit. In the end, the real test may well be the number of cell phone screens she appears on, not TV screens.