Katie Couric's tough year as 'Evening News' anchor

Newsday.com ^ | 9/3/07 | Verne Gay

[LdSentinal]

Bob Gabriel likes to think of himself as a young guy, or at least a "young 81." Lives out in Westhampton Beach with his wife of 56 years, Grace, and has spent the better part of his life in Douglaston and Long Island, where he moved after World War II - he was on a Navy destroyer in the Pacific and Atlantic theaters.

Long retired, Gabriel keeps up with world events these days by reading newspapers and watching the nightly news - what the trade now ruefully refers to as "the old media." He especially likes NBC's "Nightly News with Brian Williams" - he just calls it "channel four" - but has also checked out this newcomer Katie Couric, too.

"She's getting stronger as time goes by," Gabriel says. "She's more at ease."

When told that Couric is at the outset of a multiyear contract - her first anniversary at CBS' "Evening News" is Wednesday - he laughs: "I guess you can't believe everything you read in the paper."

[Dilbert San Diego]

How many people still watch the network news broadcasts?

[RckyRaCoCo]

She's getting stronger as time goes by

yeah, PU!

Sorry Kate's, you could broadcast from the Playboy mansion and i'd still watch old episodes of Green Acres instead of you and cBS.

[BarbaraS.]

And the same folks that are going to take ten years to accept a women news anchor are going to vote in a women president in time of war.

Sure there are.

[maggief]

While Friedman adds "she's been much much happier" in recent weeks - "If you compare her on the air now with on the air a year ago, you see a much more comfortable evening anchor person" - he admits "this has not been a lot of fun for her" because of "the awful beating she's taking; the worst I've ever seen. She's been treated unfairly from day one."

Face it, she sucks.

[joebuck]

I like the description from the reporter who said she looked like she’d been kidnapped, drugged and was making a hostage video.

[Wheee The People]

LOL

[ashtanga]

I don’t care if Ben Franklin were anchoring the SeeBS news. He’d still have to read the socialist tilt of the stuff that scrolls up the teleprompter. I listen to the radio or read reprints of fine articles in print that end up on the Net. In the meantime, I read the classics for the news that remains news.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Bob Gabriel likes to think of himself as a young guy, or at least a "young 81."

A young 81 seems to be right in the center of the demographic that TV network news gets these days.

And being paid a warehouse full of money for doing a lousy job doesn't qualify as a "rough year". It sounds like the ideal year.

[harpo11]

Katie Couric is a leftist idiot newsreader. CBS News is a leftist idiot news station. Idiots attract.

I ain't no idiot and I don't want to be made into an idiot by watching the most mundane mendacious leftist propaganda so-called news program.

[irv]

At least twice in this piece they implied that Couric would be successful if she was male. But they produce no evidence to back it up. They interviewed one old guy who doesn't watch her show much. They didn't ask him why not.

In short, this is a propaganda piece with no news content. Just like almost everything else on the TV news and in the newspapers and newsmagazines.

[AlaskaErik]

I'd Ra^ther not watch SeeBS. I have no use for an organization that is doing its best to try and destroy America.

[eyedigress]

Everybody I know is still putting in the 10th hour.

[doug from upland]

Katie, report the real news and I’ll watch - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1890618/posts

[Lancey Howard]

As the story implies, old people still watch network news programs.
Coincidentally, my brother and I were discussing the same question yesterday at the family picnic. Neither of us has watched a broadcast network news program in at least ten years.

[Enchante]

I have the perfect replacement for Katie C. — someone who is more intelligent, more articulate, and infinitely more attractive, Miss Teen South Carolina:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

Why both with a tired has-been like Katie C. when CBS could have someone young, fresh, and more exciting???

[ZULU]

Ten, maybe eleven?

Couric is a miserable anti-American worm, a vile leftist viper who is drowning in her own venom.

[Intolerant in NJ]

"She's getting stronger as time goes by," Gabriel says...yeah, and now she's in Iraq so that when Petraeus's report on the surge comes out next week, she can report that it isn't true - she was there and saw for herself just how really bad things are - they are so transparent......

[Fido969]

At least twice in this piece they implied that Couric would be successful if she was male.

Well, that doesn't exactly explain why no one watched Dan Rather, either.

I suppose the REAL reason might be that CBS sucks.

No, sorry, that can't be it. Let's go back to blaming the viewers, again.

[jwh_Denver]

OMG