The Media Drop

The Orlando Sentinel’s Hal Boedeker set off a good one in his column on Tuesday, calling NBC’s “Today” show host Katie Couric “the logical choice” to replace Dan Rather in the anchor chair for CBS Evening News. I can’t help but believe that this column is fueled more because of the fact that Couric is A) female and B) because people are fixated by bringing someone in who isn’t really in the hard news business, for some reason.

But herein lies the rub - as a late 20-something male, am I totally out of the demos that CBS News is looking for, or will be looking for down the road that it doesn’t matter what my opinion is? I just don’t see how Couric, whose “Today” show just has to have an overwhelmingly female audience (I’m making an educated guess, here), and is not filled with people looking for hard news for an hour, half-hour, whatever. It’s fluffy, morning show amusement. Obviously the news needs to gain ground with female viewers - few would argue that - but I’m not sure if getting others to change the channel at the same time helps at all. If those viewers (watching “Today” wanted hard news, they’d be watching a cabler or something else, anyway. So does Couric’s “best in the first half-hour” skill that Boedeker refers to translate to a solid half-hour in the evening?

At the same time, is CBS looking to take its current viewers, (whomever they are), and have them looking at whole new type of program - instead of finding someone who is in the “hard news” business to take the role? Maybe John Roberts and Scott Pelley aren’t compelling enough for CBS to bank on right now - I really don’t know if they would do a worse job than what is currently happening in the ratings - but I’m beginning to feel like people are just throwing names out just for the sake of doing so. Surely there are a solid list of candidates - women and men - for this job, that don’t have to be “prime time” celebrities that aren’t viewed as non-newsy by many in the public.

There have been tons of suggestions for this, including RatherBiased.com’s Matthew Sheffield suggesting in a recent New York Observer column by Joe Hagan that ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas get a shot at it, for instance.

To attempt to gauge at least a small population of news viewers, TMD is offering an informal survey asking readers who they believe would make the best new anchor at CBS News - you can take the survey once, and it can be found here.