Tying a viewer low set in June, the "CBS Evening News" reached its lowest total viewer rating in almost 20 years, reports the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog.
The program was watched by an average of 4.89 million viewers last week, which included two days when anchor Katie Couric reported from Afghanistan, the story says. It’s the same number of viewers who tuned in for a week of the program during June, and the story notes that Nielsen’s modern ratings only extend as far back as the 1991-92 season.
Still, the evening newscasts likely attracted more viewers in the decades before that, so it’s probable that last week’s viewer rating was the lowest in more than two decades, the story points out. NBC was the most-watched newscast with 7.42 million viewers, while ABC’s "World News" drew 6.51 million viewers.
It takes a very unique personality to anchor the evening news. Nothing against her talents, but Katie Couric was a bad choice. Harry Smith should take the job and the boys and girls at Black Rock would soon be much happier. It’s past time for Les and his medium talent wife to take their many eyeball network millions and go home.
Peter Bright
I agree with Peter about Katie; her talents are better used on “60 Minutes,’ but when it comes to Harry Smith I have to disagree. He may well fit the morning show, but the country is full of excellent anchors in medium and large markets. CBS would do well to conduct a serarvch for someone who would 1: Be good at the job, and 2: not cost 15 Mil a year!
You are both living in a different generation. Nothing can really save the evening news on any of the networks. With the internet and cable providing instant news updates there is very little interest in a 30-minute summary. As those in the over-50 generation that don’t use computers fade out those ratings will continue to diminish no matter who is the anchor.
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