Outside Voices: Terence Smith’s Open Letter To Katie Couric

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we turned to Terence Smith, former media correspondent for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and a former CBS News correspondent (you can learn more about him at terencefsmith.com.) Below, Terry offers some advice to Katie Couric about how to reshape what is to become the new “Evening News.”As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Here's Terry:

Katie:

Connie Chung tells me that when she called to congratulate you on your pending anchorship, she relayed the longstanding West 57th St. joke about the difference between NBC News and CBS News.

“The stains on the newsroom carpet at NBC are coffee,” the old line goes. “At CBS, they’re blood.”

Welcome to the Tiffany Network.

Since everybody is giving you free and unsolicited advice about your new assignment and how to reshape the broadcast that you are about to inherit, I thought I’d join the crowd. I offer this as a veteran of CBS News and more recently, PBS, at “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”

It’s not necessary to reinvent the evening news wheel. The basic 30-minute format still works, even if the audiences of the three major network news broadcasts have fragmented and diminished in the 200-channel universe. An hour-long broadcast would be better, of course, but given the bottom-line mentality of the networks and their affiliates, that isn’t going to happen any time soon. So the question is how best to shape a nightly broadcast that can coherently report the news in the 22 minutes or less that remain after commercials and promos.

The evening news audience may be aging, as the silver-haired commercials clearly indicate, but it is still substantial. On any given weeknight, upwards of 25 million people are tuning in to the offerings on the three largest broadcast networks. They do so because they want to be informed, not entertained. Otherwise, they’d watch Jon Stewart or “The Colbert Report.”

If the 30-year history of the NewsHour and the recent galloping success of National Public Radio demonstrate anything, it is that there is a market for serious news thoughtfully and creatively presented. Do it right, and people will flock to it.

The recent audience growth of the CBS “Evening News” is a case in point.

Bob Schieffer’s easy, conversational style is part of the explanation. But mostly, it is the improved story selection and presentation. Bob and his excellent executive producer, Rome Hartman, respect their audience and give the viewer credit for intelligence and taste. They cover the news, not just in the first and second blocks, but throughout the broadcast. Imagine: interesting, important, relevant material from beginning to end, a revolutionary concept!

Katie, you bring a well-honed interviewing style to the mix (your romantic interlude with Cody the Chimp the other morning notwithstanding.) Bring back the Newsmaker interview as a frequent, if not regular, feature.

You will attract some major “gets” in the early going. Pair them with contrasting voices when possible. The debate concept works on the NewsHour, it can be a plus on your broadcast as well, although obviously at a shorter length.

Profiles help as well. The news is really about people, not places or things. Emphasize foreign news, it matters more than ever these days.

And please, don’t worry about gravitas. You’ll have it the moment you sit (or stand) behind that desk. And don’t check your sense of humor at the door.

There is nothing really new in these suggestions. That’s my point: quality, not novelty.

The CBS News you are joining is not, of course, what it once was. A succession of budget cutters beginning with Larry Tisch has whittled away over the last two decades what was once the premier network news operation.

Bureaus have been closed abroad and at home, the corps of correspondents diminished and in all too many instances, news-packaging has replaced news-gathering. It is no longer the world-wide operation it once was.

But that downsizing and budget cutting is not unique to CBS -- all the networks have gone through it. And despite all the staff cuts, many fine professionals remain at CBS. Who knows? If curiosity about your advent as the anchor of the CBS “Evening News” boosts the ratings, which it is almost certain to do at least at first, the bean-counters might even put a few beans back in the budget jar.

So have fun at CBS News. You’ll be great.

All the best,

Terry Smith