CBS Evening News with Katie Couric

[atlnewsfan03]

Beginning Tuesday, September 5, 2006... CBS News will be making history when Katie Couric becomes the first ever female solo anchor to any network evening news program. CBS is hoping that Katie's presence will help turn around the networks news division.

Katie will also serve as producer and correspondent for 60 Minutes... as well as anchor and editor-in-chief for the CBS Evening News. Plus, CBS will be debuting a new graphics, new theme music, and a new set for the evening news program.

On the rival networks, some interesting notes... ABC will officially be debuting Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts as co-hosts of Good Morning America on September 5. ABC will also be debuting Chris Cuomo as news anchor, and Sam Champion as weather forecaster to the morning news program.

NBC will officially be broadcasting Today in high definition on September 13, making NBC's morning news program the 2nd morning program to be produced in the new HD format. On that same day, Meredith Vieira officially replaces Katie and joins Matt Lauer, Ann Curry, and Al Roker on the top-rated NBC morning news program.

What are your thoughts?

[tvboy]

Anxious to see the new sets of the CBS Evening News (got a glimpse of it Thursday night when Bob signed off) and of the "Today Show."

From what was visible, the CBS set looked nice, although I always thought their old set was the best of the Big 3. NBC is in dire need of a new set (should've gotten one when Brian took over from Tom almost two years ago), and ABC's looks like you're at a drive-in movie theater.

It'll be interesting to hear the music CBS uses. I'm really looking forward to Tuesday to see what Katie does!

[atlnewsfan03]

ABC has been broadcasting Good Morning America in HD since November, 2005. I'm hoping the other ABC News programs, such as World News Tonight, Nightline, World News Now, World News This Morning, This Week, 20/20, and Primetime could soon begin broadcasting in HD.

NBC will be debuting Today in HD. I'm hoping that the other NBC News programs... Nightly News, Early Today, Dateline, and Meet The Press could follow pursuit.

As for CBS. I believe Bob mentioned toward the end of Thurday's (8/30/06) broadcast that the new CBS Evening News set is state-of-the-art. Hmmm. Could he have been inferring on the set being HD ready? I'm hoping so. I'm hoping that could be the case for the other CBS News programs... The Early Show, Up To The Minute, CBS Morning News, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and Face The Nation. As for Sunday Morning... I believe CBS would be better off just dumping it, despite the show's rich history... CBS expand The Early Show be seen 7 days a week, instead of the current 6 days a week.

[atlnewsfan03]

February, 2007...

ABC World News with Charles Gibson wins sweeps...
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams slips into 2nd place...
CBS Evening News with Katie Couric remains in 3rd place...

It's been 6 months since Katie signed on as anchor of CBS's evening news program. During the first month, the ratings were soaring for the news program. Since October, 2006... the news program has remained in 3rd place. CBS has been criticized for running the news program on the soft news format, vs. the traditional hard news format. The much talked about segment freeSpeech even drew some controversey.

Late-Breaking Development. CBS has named Rick Kaplan as executive producer of the news program, replacing Rome Hartman. Hartman, former 60 Minutes producer had changed the evening news program, to include longer interviews and opinion pieces, was canned as a result of his changes not going over well with viewers. Kaplan, former CNN U.S. and MSNBC president, and well respected TV newsman replaces Hartman, with hopes to improve ratings, and restore the integrity of the news program. This news come on the heels of an EP swap at NBC's Nightly News.

Source... www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6422650.html