The Katie Couric Problem

The Katie Couric Problem

NOTE: since I originally posted this blog, and as I predicted, it was reported today (April 12) that Katie will be leaving her position for who knows what in the wake of the pitiful performance of the CBS Nightly News which she was hired to anchor. The powers that be there are still rangling over what it is she will go on to, making stupid suggestions and ridiculous predictions, on their way to assigning her to another equally inappropriate position - prime time interviews on a cable channel (which no one will watch and will itself be gone in 6 months), or a "serious" talk show along the lines of Oprah Winfrey's show.

If they were smart, they would put Katie into a talk show of course (as I suggested), but it shouldn't be on cable and it shouldn't be in the afternoon or anywhere near the evening, but around 11am - to compete with - or at 10am to lead into - "The View". There is where Katie will flourish - in a mid-morning program geared toward women, with soft interviews and lots of humor and silliness. Maybe a little more like "Ellen" than "Oprah".

Katie is more than capable of handling semi- and "nice" - celebs but not hard news personalities and please: not hard news. She has no street cred among news people, nor even among people who simply make it a habit to watch news. C'mon CBS, stop wasting your time and money and do what is being whispered about! Get Katie out of there, quickly, get her a pretty set with flowers on the coffee table, along with a big New York Starbucks mug, and bring on the attractive and non-controversial celebrities and she will be a huge hit. The producer who jumps on this will be a hero and the move will be considered "brilliant" and everybody will be happy.

Of course in this case, it's no great shakes to be right about this all - in fact it's not like the folks at CBS didn't know this would happen about 12 seconds after they signed the deal with Couric. You know it's just that the idea seemed like such a good one; sort of the same way that invading a country - ANY country - after being attacked sounded so good to a lot of idiots not too long ago. It just takes one brave, smart, non-conformist to speak up and save the day. If only Colin Powell had worked for CBS...

And now on to the original blog - which seems awfully prescient if you ask me...

I used to be a loyal viewer of CBS Nightly news but I, like most other
people, have abandoned CBS in favor of either NBC or ABC (they are
virtually interchangeable - with equally wonderful, warm, capable
newsreaders), specifically because Katie Couric is such a
pitiful presence on a night-time news program.

CBS will never, ever win the first place in the Nightly News hour with
Katie at the helm, and surely by now they know that, but in the short
run there are a few things they can do to keep the few remaining
viewers who are too elderly to turn the channel from abandoning them.

It's hard to believe that any market research CBS did before hiring
Katie indicated that the morning audience for Katie would follow her
to evening news. If they didn't do the research (even if just asking
the people who work there), certainly they're kicking themselves now! But really
any intelligent person could have told them that what people,
especially women, watch in the morning is a zero indicator of what
they will watch in the evening. In the morning we're looking for
lighter programming; something that can be half paid attention to
while we're getting dressed and packing lunches.

In the evening, we've faced a day of decision-making, read the paper,
discussed current events with co-workers and are looking for
thoughtful, serious information delivered by newscasters we respect.
Katie Couric has never been a "newscaster" in the mind of the public,
and I know this might come as a shock to you, CBS, but the fact that she is
a woman is not only insignificant to women viewers, but is, in fact, a
strike against her. (Frankly, if you had stayed with the warm,
serious, well-respected Bob Shieffer you would probably be competitive
with the two other nightly news programs, but that's a whole 'nother
letter!)

But please, don't get the wrong idea: it's not because she is a woman that she can't succeed (now listen carefully - this is a subtle point), but because she is a woman without street cred. Give me a Diane Sawyer or a Christiane Amanpour (in fact, they
could hands down win the night if they put Christiane at the news
desk), or one of the capable newswomen we've seen reporting from Iraq,
or at the scene of the Katrina disaster. But Katie Couric, with her
crisp white shirts and finely pressed hair, reading the news about
death, destruction and mayhem all around the world is actually
distasteful. They may as well have hired Martha Stewart.

So what to do? Here are a few suggestions.

First of all, please tell Katie to get a new Botox doctor. She has
overdone it with the mid-eye injections to the point that her outer
eyebrows are winging out like Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Have the
make-up people never heard of the "Vulcan Effect" from a Botox overdose? She's beginning to look like poor Nichol Kidman who also used
be a beautiful woman but who must be visiting the same Doctor as
Katie. She too, looks like a angry creature commuting on the Starship
Enterprise. Take a note from Brian Williams who has the most mobile
forehead in the business. He fairly bleeds compassion and concern.
Charlie Gibson too, can knit his eyebrows into a winter scarf. Take
it from my guy, Katie: lower the dosage, and then just a few
injections above the outside brow to compensate.

And it's impossible to miss those eyebrows because the lighting is so hot on
poor Katie's face that the only features left to see are her brows,
her pupils, her nostrils and her lips. It's like her face is a police
sketch. Between the bright lights turned up to 11 and her lack of
angular facial contours, her face looks like a harvest moon. She
looks waxy and plastic which is what you expect from the Regis and
Kelly show, but which is exactly the wrong effect for a nightly news
reader. And what's with the cakey orange make-up?

On to the hair. The stick-straight hair just looks ridiculous.
Attention producers: Katie is not 30 and she's not Jennifer Aniston.
She's not working on Wall Street or going to clubs with her
girlfriends, or modeling hair products for Garnier Fructis. She looks
like she had her head on an ironing board right before she came out to
take her seat. Not only does it look unnatural on a woman of her age
(and frankly is a little behind the curve of fashion anyway), it
simply adds to the full-moon face effect. Would Brian or Charlie
mousse their hair so that it sparkled with product and stood up at
crazy angles like Bart Simpson's? Of course not, because the viewer
doesn't want that. CBS viewers want newscaster hair; Kennedy hair;
50s era hair; respectable hair; no matter how old they are.

Americans of all ages, and particularly CBS-watching Americans, belong
to a collective news-viewing consciousness, and we want our nightly
newscasters to look like products of a certain nightly newscaster
private school. Katie looks like the weather girl who is just filling
in until the regular guy gets back. If they're not willing to send
Katie to Iraq to do some front-line reporting, then at least make her
hair look real. Let's see some waves, a little texture and some
volume. Let her look ever-so-slightly disheveled as if she'd been
somewhere in her life, other than the make-up chair.

Ok, next. Katie, you are not interviewing us, so lean back! Couric
has a tendency to lean into the news as if she's trying to make a
connection with the viewers watching her from behind the teleprompter.
This means viewers get to watch her eyeballs jitter back and forth as
she strains to read the words, instead of the naturalistic,
all-knowing affect that Brian and Charlie have mastered. Is it that
she's not used to reading so many words? Or is it that the words are
bigger than daytime TV words? Whatever it is, she seems to be
straining, and whether it's to make a connection with us (her morning
show trademark), or because she's simply having a problem mastering
the reading material, she comes off looking vulnerable and desperate.

Relax, Katie! Sit up, vertically at least, or even tilt back a little
(like Charlie!). Try to cultivate an attitude of confidence. If you
look worried, how do you think we're going to feel? We want concern,
compassion and a sort of Godlike omniscience. Not fear. Think Walter
Cronkite. And if you're having trouble getting the words out, whether
it's pronunciation or rhythm, well, that's what rehearsals are for.

Then again, maybe the leaning and the straining is a consequence of
the Tammy Faye Bakker mascara that the make-up people have piled onto
her eyelashes. How could anyone see through that sticky forest of
spiky hair triangles? Every time she blinks, I'm concerned that she
won't be able to open her eyes again. That mascara is caked on like
breading on a corn dog, and the ultimate effect is that this CBS
nightly news hostess looks like a Raggedy Anne doll.

It's not poor Katie's fault - she's doing what she does and does well - reading -
it's just that it has nothing to do with news and we don't want to watch her do it at night. Soon enough, when CBS runs out of faultless producers to fire, they'll fire Katie (or "promote" her), moving her in to the position she should have been granted as soon as she left The Today Show, which is: her own morning TV show. It will have nothing to do with news, and everything to do with celebrity interviews and cooking
demonstrations and she will be a big hit, competing handily with "The
View".

What a terrific error CBS made and how far back they've fallen with a
decision made certainly by a committee of nervous yes-men, who think
(or pretended to agree) that newsreaders are followed like rock stars
from one show to the next. This isn't as big a disaster as invading
Iraq, so they can comfort themselves with the knowledge they didn't
make a blunder on quite that scale, but as far as CBS news'
credibility, it's on a par.

Courage, Katie.