Outside Voices: Carpe Katie, Says William Powers
Katie Couric's move to the anchor slot at the CBS "Evening News" has already generated a lot of noise. There will be much more as her September debut approaches.
Yet, for all the hoo-haa, I don't think it's become apparent why this is such a big moment for television news.
Couric is a rare bird, and I'm not talking about her gender. She's the first evening news anchor to arrive as a fully formed public figure with a true mass following. It's taken other anchors years to earn the respect and affection of their audiences, to reach the point where they were on a first-name basis with the culture: Dan, Tom and Peter. Katie is there already and she hasn't even begun. In the past, the anchor job has magnified those who held it. Couric will magnify the job, which has been shrinking in significance and influence for many years.
There is now a whole generation of media consumers who, when they think about network news at all, know it mainly as the butt of jokes, in particular a very funny joke called "The Daily Show." Connie Chung's recent torch-song travesty was a sensation partly because it crystallized what is now the popular view of TV news people: absurd, clueless, tone-deaf boobs.
Things are at such a low ebb, it's tempting say network news has nowhere to go but up. Alas, this is not true. Collectively the three evening network newscasts still pull in tens of millions of viewers, numbers that are the envy of cable news. The problem is the demographics of this audience, which run the gamut from old to ancient, as the ads make clear with their leitmotifs of incontinence and constipation. These core viewers are headed inexorably for the exits, and as they go, there's a real possibility nobody will be there to replace them. If the network news fails to recover the magnetism and influence it once had, it will die with the last Baby Boomer, if not before.
This is why Couric, with her unusual combination of Hollywood charisma and journalistic smarts, represents such a fantastic opportunity, not just for CBS but for TV news in general. If anyone can pull the nets out of the hole they're in, she can. My only hope is that CBS doesn't blow the chance.
Like many media-watchers, I've gotten a lot of mileage in recent years out of mocking the networks and the hapless ways they've responded to change. Conventional wisdom says that, in this digital era, the nets and the gigantic audiences they once took for granted are, quite literally, history. Maybe that's true. But the fact is, though network news has been around for less than a century, it has had a profound, largely positive impact on the culture. It's a tradition that took the news seriously and, despite rampant cheesiness that's grown up around the edges, basically still does. We would be a lot poorer without it. With that in mind, a few thoughts on how those who will oversee Couric's arrival might make the most of this chance.
1. Don't overthink it. Like that other declining business, metropolitan newspapers, the networks have a tendency to rely too much on audience research. Nothing can happen unless it has been tested, polled, and focus-grouped to death. And death is the word for the synthetic, excessively tweaked products of this kind of overthinking. You folks know what news is, so does your new anchor, and so does her audience. Don't game the spark out of the moment.
2. Not too clever. Yes, "The Daily Show" is a hit with young people. That doesn't mean those same young people want the real news to look and feel like Jon Stewart's. I'd wager they don't want sarcastic comedy from their network anchor – they just want great stories and news. Journalists don't do parody well, and they're especially bad at self-parody. When you're tempted, just think about Connie's song.
3. No gimmicks, please. We've all seen it before – the anchor striding onto some baroque "high-tech" set that looks like a cross between the Starship Enterprise and the Bat Cave. The backdrop of massive multiple screens. The overwrought, percussive theme song. The open laptop on the desk. The weird moving graphics that undulate around NBC's Brian Williams, making it hard to focus on what he's saying. These tricks all say one thing to the viewer: "We here at the network think you have the attention span of a waterbug." Network news used to be smart people producing news for smart people, or at least it felt that way. There was an implied respect. In the last few decades it has come to feel like smart people producing news for dumb people. Nobody likes to be patronized.
4. Go long. The defining trend of TV journalism in the last few decades is the soundbite. In a time when people feel their own lives are too rushed and caffeinated, the last thing they want when they turn on the news is breathlessness. Assume we know the headlines – after all, we've been out in the world, or surfing the Web, all day. Repeat them quickly and then take a page from National Public Radio and The NewsHour: slow down. Tell us a few important stories, slowly. Help us breathe and think.
4. Conversation is Good. Speaking of The NewsHour, why not bring on brainy guests who know a lot about the news of the moment, and let Katie talk to them at length, the way Jim Lehrer and his crew do? After all those years on the "Today" sofa, the woman definitely knows how to chat. But spare us the retreads, the familiar talking heads we know all too well from cable. For instance, if the stock market plunges, don't bring on manic, ubiquitous Jim Cramer. Give us some high-octane economics professor, or maybe Alan Greenspan.
5. Be Real. The great strength of the senior newsman whom Couric will replace, Bob Schieffer, is his authenticity. The man is so real, so comfortable in his own skin, it's downright riveting. Katie herself has a similar quality, a genuine folksiness that is the key to her charisma. She thrived on "Today" not because of the glamorous new look they gave her, or the busy, thrill-a-minute pace of the show, but in spite of those things. Amid all the hype and glitz of modern television, she always seemed to have her feet planted solidly, somebody you could trust. She is, in short, a natural. Let Katie be Katie, and you might pull off a kind of miracle.