Rather says Couric dumber than he was

[Tiger in Spain 0]

I'm sick of seeing the sensationalized scare tactics and the celebrity worship that completely fill the news these days. This more than anything has turned me off from the news on television. Bring back the days of just reporting the damn news, showing some video, and letting folks make up their own minds.

Rather Attacks Couric: 'Dumb It Down, Tart It Up'

As already noted on NewsBusters, former CBS anchor Dan Rather appeared on Monday’s edition of "Morning Joe" and lobbied for a "a strategic withdrawal from Iraq." He also found time to twice bash his "Evening News" successor Katie Couric for dumbing down and "tarting up" the news. After giving the standard caveat that Couric is a "nice person," he went in for kill. Speculating on the program’s declining ratings, Rather complained to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that "the mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ ethos to the evening news and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."

Rather vociferously derided the media’s obsession with celebrities, in particular the hyperbolic coverage of the Paris Hilton affair. (This is a fair point, but it’s a little odd to be making it on MSNBC, one of the worst offenders in Hilton overkill.) For a second time in the 7:30am hour, he attacked the "superficial changes" made in his absence:

Dan Rather: "You know, she tried to change networks, which is always difficult and change the programs at the same time. They've done all of the usual things. They changed the set. They changed the executive producers. They changed the graphics person, lately, forced out a guy who had been there, Ned Steinberg, for many, many years. They make all those kind of the superficial changes. I do want to say that, I think, under Rick Kaplan, that they have tried to harden up the broadcast in recent days, but that is a relative phrase, harden it up. That , you know, the trend line continues, as I say, dumbing it down, tarting it up, going to celebrity coverage rather than war coverage."

Hahahaha

[Tigermike 3,052]

I would Rather see Katie than Dan. If she would do the news topless it would help the ratings. But I rarely watch either.

[otterinbham 0]

CBS's news ratings are dropping faster than a paralyzed falcon.

[Tiger in Spain 0]

I would Rather see Katie than Dan. If she would do the news topless it would help the ratings. But I rarely watch either.

It'd have to be closed captioned, too. CBS would still have to put a gag in her mouth to get me to watch it....even if her baby baits were showing.

[DKW 86 7,440]

Rather, an entity totally devoid of feeling anything other than his own bloated self worth. CBS was in the toilet while he was there. They permanently lost me as a viewer during the fake document scam and the cover up.

As far as dumbing it down...Rather STILL insists that the documents that even a 12 year old can see are fakes, that even his experts say are fakes, that even the secretary said are fakes are still "not proven" to be fakes, iow, they are real.

[otterinbham 0]

If you're going to have a newscaster babe, you might as well go for the right one. I would watch everynight if it were this one. Maybe the most beautiful woman on the planet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzBv7G1jE-0

[Tigermike 3,052]

Do the Birmingham stations now go out of their way to hire plain, unattractive or downright ugly women for their news?

[Tiger in Spain 0]

If you're going to have a newscaster babe, you might as well go for the right one. I would watch everynight if it were this one. Maybe the most beautiful woman on the planet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzBv7G1jE-0

Is this Melissa Theuriau? I ask because I can't see the youtube from work. If it is she, you have good taste! She is a stunner.

[otterinbham 0]

If you're going to have a newscaster babe, you might as well go for the right one. I would watch everynight if it were this one. Maybe the most beautiful woman on the planet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzBv7G1jE-0

Is this Melissa Theuriau? I ask because I can't see the youtube from work. If it is she, you have good taste! She is a stunner.

She is indeed. I don't even know what she's saying, but I could watch her for hours. Is that wrong?

[Tiger in Spain 0]

Not at all. She could be yapping along about some large meteor hurling straight towards earth, how we were all going to die horrible and painful deaths, and I wouldn't mind one bit.

[Tiger in Spain 0]

Now, CBS is saying folks that don't watch Katie Twinkie are nothing but sexist neanderthals.

Yeah Les, that's the reason your ratings are in the sh*tter. Why not take a look at that turd you call a newscast, you jackass. Give us something to watch and the viewers will come. We want news, not infotainment.

CBS blames sexism for bad ratings

Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, on Tuesday suggested that sexist attitudes were partly to blame for the faltering performance of Katie Couric, the news anchor he recruited to the network with a $15m annual pay package.

“I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling,” Mr Moonves said of the audience’s reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low.

He reiterated, however, that he was committed to Ms Couric and that he believed her programme would succeed in spite of its last place standing behind rivals ABC and NBC.

Ms Couric’s gender has been a central issue since CBS poached her from NBC’s Today show a year ago and made her the first woman to solo anchor a network newscast, filling the seat of such legends as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.

CBS was hoping to draw younger, female viewers to a US television institution whose audience has halved in the past 25 years.

Ms Couric has managed a 2 per cent increase in women age 18 to 49 since her September debut. However, that has been more than offset by an 11 per cent decline among men over 55, who still constitute the bulk of the evening news’ audience.

Mr Moonves has previously chided critics for scrutinising Ms Couric’s wardrobe and personal life. However, his latest remarks, made during a breakfast sponsored by Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Communications, were his most explicit about gender bias.

They come at a time when New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is testing whether Americans are willing to accept a woman in another authority position – as president.

Linda Mason, head of standards at CBS News, last month told the network’s Public Eye blog: “I had no idea that a woman delivering the news would be a handicap,” and that the public seemed to “prefer the news from white guys”.

In the absence of specific research, some analysts took issue with that argument. “People get news from women all the time – on local news, on morning shows. I’m sceptical of his discovery of sexism,” said Andrew Tyndall, whose Tyndall Report monitors newscasts. He and others have criticised the style of Ms Couric’s newscast, which emphasised soft features over hard news – something CBS seemed to acknowledge this year when it replaced the producer.

“Some of our changes didn’t work,” Mr Moonves said on Tuesday. But he added: “If TV news doesn’t want to go the way of the newspapers, which are declining rapidly, then we have to try change.”

Link

[AURaptor 1,126]

Katie's got a great pair..........of eyes. But the time of the evening news show is pretty much over. With the internet and 24 hr news channels, there's simply no need for the 6 and 11 o'clock crew any more.

Sorry.

[channonc 466]

Sexism... that's quite an insult to the public.

Unfortunately, Couric was only good at the fluff celebrity interviews, and was why she worked well in the morning show format which did a variety of human interest and entertainment stories along with the real stuff. She was hardly one that ever reported on serious news stories. So to try to put her in that box was taking a huge risk-- which is obviously failing.

I do agree with Raptor that the evening news is slowly losing is purpose to 24 hour news networks and the internet.