The Cable Game strives, of course, to cover mostly, well, the cable news game. But TCG is curious about all news, including the news that Katie Couric is now “up” on CBS News. Indeed, the fact that her broadcast is available on streaming video further accelerates the trend of news convergence: some day soon, all news, of just about all kinds, will be available on your computer screen. That is, TV news, broadcast as well as cable, will be “streamed.” And websites such as Yahoo, of course, have substantial video capabilities; TCG is a fan of Kevin Sites’ “Hot Zone” coverage. Indeed, more newspapers—led by the deep-pocketed New York Times—also have increased streaming capability. And let’s not forget bloggers, who are now becoming v-loggers.
So the river of news is running wide and high—and running right into all of our computers. Cool!
So what to make of Katie Couric’s debut last night? A few thoughts on a perf that certainly wasn’t bad, but certainly wasn’t overly good. It’s not her fault, she’s nice enough, and certainly perky enough. However, she has chosen to live within the pre-existing paradigm of news, as opposed to trying to change it.
First, she didn’t do anything bad. How could she? The TV nightly news format has been around for almost 60 years now. How could one make a mistake? The playbook was written decades ago.
Second, as the flip side of the first, she didn’t do anything really good. Once again, how could she? If you start with, as a given, that the show is going to consist of a starring anchor, sitting at a big desk, backed up by a supporting cast of reporters and talking heads, and that you must wrap up in half an hour, minus commercials—how much room is there for genuine creativity?
So they redesigned the studio, giving Katie a nice new desk, and then moved her over into a chatty-chair format for a brief interview with columnist Tom Friedman. Are these big changes? Of course not. Yet at the same time, in a lucrative market where each ratings point is worth hundreds of millions in advertising dollars, if Les Moonves & Co. can tweak the venerable newscast into a higher Nielsen bracket, then the whole exercise is well worth it. But making more money is not the same as utilizing more creativity.
Third, real creativity would call for a “paradigm shift” in the news. Why not “pop up” commentary—remember “pop up” video on MTV? That was fun—and even informative. Anything to punctuate the usual pomposity, in the vein, even of the “Joe Isuzu” ads of 20 or so years ago. OK, those weren’t serious, but neither today is Jon Stewart, and he’s so cool he’s hot. What about animation? There’s more visual creativity in the average college coffee shop, where kids toil away on their Macs, than on the nightly news.
The only witty spark came at the end of the show, when Katie allowed that she was still debating how to sign off. She ran clips of various news luminaries, including Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. And then added, too, Ted Baxter and Ron Burgundy—that’s a joke, of course. Ted was the insufferably full of himself, insufferably funny anchor on the “Mary Tyler Moore” show, and Ron was the play-it-for-laffs star of the recent film “Anchorman.” Something tells me that such flashes of humor will be scarce in the Couric Era to Come.
There’s no law that sez that CBS has to do anything other than the same ol’ same ol’. But by the same token, there’s no law, then, that sez that I hafta watch news at 6:30 pm ET that I could watch any time on cable news. If broadcast wants to be special, it must, in fact, be special. If not, not.
