The Katie Couric experiment is already turning into a disaster for CBS (CBS). While everyone knew that the "curiosity" numbers would be huge the first week she was on, they also knew that the following period of time would tell if what they did was going to work or not.
The numbers are showing that it's not working in their favor. Last week Couric came in third place again with 7.3 million viewers. At the same time, over 8 million viewers watched Charles Gibson on "World News Tonight," and almost 9 million watched "NBC Nightly News" with Brian Williams.
I don't think anybody can blame her outright; she was set up for failure by the way the entire episode was played out. They talk about the huge salary she would get; attempting to turn her into superstar status. We talked before it ever started at bizofshowbiz that there was no way that this would work.
The major reason is that the behavior of evening news watchers has changed. Young people no longer use the TV as their main source of news; their preference is to consume their news on the Internet. With that being the case, there was no possibility for growth. The numbers just aren't there.
The only consolation that is offered by the network is that she is attracting 400,000 more viewers than Bob Schaeffer when he was there.
One can say that it's a long-term commitment and that it's only just begun. And that's not a bad way of looking at it. The problem, as I said though is that there is nowhere to go to get the numbers to grow the show.
It's similar to the way Howard Stern was promoted to Sirius Radio. They paid the big bucks and marketed it that way; yet the fans, overall, didn't change with him when he went.
The bottom line in all of this is that it doesn't matter what you're doing or how good you are, if you're working on the wrong thing. This is definitely the wrong thing. To put this kind of money into someone, in a decreasing market, is another look into how the entertainment industry doesn't understand the forces that are working now in the business.
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