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Network anchors tend to be the kind of people who pride themselves on grueling fits of on-the-job endurance. So when Katie Couric went missing from the CBS Evening News anchor chair for four days last month, it raised eyebrows -- particularly because her absences fell during February sweeps, one of the periods when ratings are measured. Was this Couric's way of protesting CBS News's failure to snag a primary debate for her? Actually, a spokeswoman says two of the absences were related to the campaign: On Feb. 7, she was away interviewing Hillary Clinton for 60 Minutes (and we all...

The Democratic National Committee plans to announce Wednesday night that it has canceled the final presidential debate in its fall series because of a potential writers strike at CBS News, a sponsor of the debate. [snip][snip]....Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was the first candidate to say she would not participate if CBS were the target of a strike, which could be seen as crossing a picket line. Other candidates followed suit. "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric was to be the moderator.

In a Blogcritics interview with Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz on his book Reality Show, Scott Butki asked if CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric really hated the P-word when applied to her: I wanted you to elaborate on a paragraph on page 254 and whether you think it was fair for the media to caricature Katie Couric and whether she herself ever made that quote attributed to friends:

NEW YORK (AP) — If some people thought traveling to Iraq and Syria was a ratings stunt for Katie Couric, it didn't work out that way. The "CBS Evening News" tied a record low with just under 5.5 million viewers last week, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday. Last week and Memorial Day week are the two least-watched CBS evening newscasts since at least 1987, and probably far earlier. CBS said it wasn't surprising, and argued that last week's numbers were artificially deflated because of U.S. Open coverage.

As she broadcasts from Baghdad and Damascus this week, making what is arguably her biggest stab at "serious" news-anchordom, it's plain to see Ms. Couric has little to do with the venerable -- and increasingly out-of-sync -- traditions of the evening news program. While her makeup may be a tad off as she broadcasts from war-torn Iraq, interviewing generals, villagers and Army regulars, Katie remains the perky inquisitor. Her style seems more appropriate for soccer moms and boomers still trying to be hip, not the creaky oldsters who typically flock to the evening newscasts.

Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, on Tuesday suggested that sexist attitudes were partly to blame for the faltering performance of Katie Couric, the news anchor he recruited to the network with a $15m annual pay package. “I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling,” Mr Moonves said of the audience’s reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low. He reiterated, however, that he was committed to Ms Couric and that he believed her programme would succeed...

Michael Ramirez takes on deadweight anchor Katie Couric and all she's doing to CBS here.

One-third of Americans say they have a negative view of Katie Couric, her personal popularity lagging behind rivals Charles Gibson and Brian Williams just as her evening news program trails in the ratings. The Gallup Poll survey released Thursday found that 51 percent of Americans said they had a positive view of Couric, who jumped from NBC's "Today" show to CBS last fall. The poll found Gibson and Williams essentially running neck-and-neck in terms of popularity. ABC's Gibson was viewed positively by 62 percent of TV viewers and NBC's Williams by 59 percent, but that is within the sampling's margin...

If there's one person who should be relieved about the firing of Don Imus, it's CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric. All the airtime and ink devoted to Imus' getting fired from his radio show and its simulcast on MSNBC in the wake of racist comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team has obscured the latest foul in Couric's rocky rookie season. For those of you who missed it: A posting on Couric's blog, ostensibly a nostalgic piece about the use of libraries in the Internet age, not only was ghost-written by Melissa McNamara, a producer on the CBS...

For $15 million a year, wouldn't you think Katie Couric could find the time in her day to reflect on her own feelings in her Couric & Co. blog on the cbsnews.com Web site — and not on those of a Wall Street Journal reporter named Jeffrey Zaslow? "I still remember when I got my first library card," the April 4 Katie Couric's Notebook video blog on cbsnews.com began. Much of what followed apparently wasn't written by Ms. Couric, but instead by a Web producer who had read Mr. Zaslow's essay about the declining use of libraries in the Internet...

Pasadena -- Katie Couric's going to the Super Bowl. The "CBS Evening News" anchor will contribute a feature to CBS' four-hour Super Bowl pregame show on Feb. 4, the network said on Thursday. She will also anchor the evening news from Miami, the site of the big game, on the Friday before the game. There's precedent at other networks for the news anchors to be involved in sports coverage, including Brian Williams and Couric during NBC's Olympic broadcasts, said Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports. "It is the biggest event of the day and it makes sense for...

“America wasn't truly ready for the first solo woman evening-news anchor, let alone someone smart and attractive with pretensions to sounding puckish and hip...” Does Katie Couric's Stumble Signal Hillary Clinton's Fall? You can tell me all the reasons it’s wrong, misguided, and unfair – that Katie is only one woman, what about Diane Sawyer, what about the quality of her show, thank you very much, or experience, and why should all women be judged by her, especially women, of whom there are more than a few, to judge by the ratings, who prefer their news from someone else, who...

The ratings for Katie Couric's CBS Evening News may be down – but the upbeat anchor isn't. Claiming that despite her third-place ranking among the major three network newscasts, she's "feeling great" and "having a great time," Couric tells USA Today, "We kind of ignore people who are observing everything we do and praising, criticizing or analyzing it, and we're just doing what we want." Couric, who delivered a ratings wallop with her Sept. 5 debut, says that being in first place "was never an expectation by anyone at CBS News, and it shouldn't have been an expectation by anyone...

I really, really hope Rush Limbaugh sees and picks this up today. COURIC: CBS 'EVENING NEWS' RATINGS DISASTER Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 NEW YORK CITY WABC 7.1 WNBC 5.3 WCBS 3.7 LOS ANGELES KABC 5.9 KNBC 3.1 KCBS 1.5 WASHINGTON, DC NBC 9.3 ABC 7.8 CBS 2.5

The fifth week was the toughest for Katie Couric, whose viewership on the "CBS Evening News" has dropped each week since her debut the day after Labor Day. Her broadcast averaged 7.04 million viewers last week, third to NBC's "Nightly News" (8.56 million) and ABC's "World News" (7.97 million), according to Nielsen Media Research. CBS points out that the "CBS Evening News" is the only one of the three network newscasts with more viewers last week than the same week a year earlier. NBC's margin of victory last year was 2.2 million. "Where we were last week or even in...

Are you surprised Couric dropped from first to third so quickly? Yes    No   

Well, I gave Katie a chance...an honest chance. I watched her debut and I watched her tonight, since Rush was on. Not a damn thing has changed except the gender of the person in the anchor chair. The leftist drivel is a joke. Tonight, perky Katie apparently believes a 5 or 6 year old video tape of Useless never-bin-Laiden is a triumph of terror over Bush's liberation of 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. The BIG LEAD of the night was something like "On a day when the President says we're safer in the war on terror, Al...

Live thread for the anti-Bush bashing. It's bad tonight. But, Rush should be on.

I think it's really her!

July 29, 2006 -- KATIE Couric had fellow passengers aboard a New York-bound jet on the warpath this week when, as their plane was about to taxi to the runway, she got out of her seat and begged the pilot to allow one of her late-arriving producers to board. ........ The witness told Page Six that attendants on Wednesday's 6:30 p.m. Delta Shuttle flight out of Washington, D.C., had already closed the door and passengers were buckled in, when the soon-to-be CBS News anchor raced up the aisle with a cellphone to her ear and told an attendant she had...

It's time to watch the Today Show. The best news the annoying perky one could get is that her old show is doing better without her. Then, after a week or two, stop watching again. FreeRepMates Unite!

DAILY POLL Was Katie Couric a good choice to take over as anchor of the ''CBS Evening News''? Yes No Maybe Don't care

POLL: Will Katie Couric make a good network evening news anchor? Yes No Not sure

No skating rink collapse, judging scandal or childhood triumph over adversity could compete with the melodrama broiling inside NBC as it launched its coverage of the 2006 Winter Games. The agita — set off by rumors that Couric might defect to anchor the "CBS Evening News" — cut right through the network's opening ceremony extravaganza. Bob Costas was once again the NBC host, but he had a new partner at his side, the anchorman Brian Williams, stiffly dignified even though he wore a navy sweater over his shirt and tie. Neither man mentioned Couric, who played host to the last...

Did anyone else lose their breakfast this morning monitoring The Perky One? Katie interviewed Slick on the pretense of his Africa trip, blah, blah, blah. With that little task out of the way, Kate then ask Impeached Expresident Bill Clinton about Karl Rove and ethics of this administration. Slick went on to whine about how effective Rove is at making democrats look like fools. And yes, it would be nice if he was gone.

Top Executive at NBC's 'Today' Show Fired Posted: Tuesday, Apr 19, 2005 - 05:05:15 pm PDT By DAVID BAUDER NEW YORK - NBC on Tuesday ousted the chief executive behind the "Today" show, with the network's biggest money-maker in a ratings slump and feeling the heat from ABC's "Good Morning America." The network said it would name a replacement for Tom Touchet, the show's executive producer, on Wednesday. Touchet has had the job since November 2002. "Today" hasn't spent a week out of first place in the ratings, but NBC's position of unchallenged dominance in the morning has eroded. Its...

MIDI - I'M A LITTLE TEAPOT Perky Katie Couric, that's my name That Bush had won is really a shame I'm afraid when I see SUVs Like a bug those things might squish me

To replace disgraced anchorman Dan Rather, CBS might choose think-alike Katie Couric, NBC's biased little morning chit-chat hostess. So speculates influential Broadcasting & Cable magazine. "One scenario gaining commerce among industry cognescenti is that CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves will name an interim placeholder — The Early Show co-host Harry Smith, Face the Nation moderator Bob Scheiffer or 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley—until he can land a superstar to take over. If that's the tack he takes, what I hear is that the big name he's most likely to court is Katie Couric, arguably the most incandescent of all the stars...

I almost feel ashamed so I have to apologize. No, this is not an, "I'm a gay American" confession. My father and I were talking earlier this evening about watching the Olympics. I just sent him an apologetic e-mail as well. I tried, I really, really tried. I cannot and will not watch Katie Couric hosting anything. She makes me so violently ill that I cannot watch the Olympics as long as she is one of the announcers.

SAWYER SENSATIONS: 'GOOD MORNING AMERICA' PASSES 'TODAY' IN TOP 10 UPSET Rare good news at the Magic Kingdom as ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA takes 9 of the nation's top 10 markets away from NBC's TODAY show! Wednesday morning ratings show GMA passing TODAY in audience levels in major markets. GMA's only turbulence: a tie in San Fran and a 5% deficit to TODAY in Los Angeles. Otherwise, it's ABC's Diane Sawyer over NBC's Kaitie Couric in America's lucrative Wake-up War. GOOD MORNING AMERICA is expanding its status as urban darling -- to a potential national leader. "There are a few...

http://home.earthlink.net/~midimouse7/Page3a.html MIDI - I'M NOT LISA I'm not Dianne...my name is KatieShe is someone I despise She gets the big one...El PresidenteI could scratch out that woman's eyes She got the interview...so now I'm really screwedThere go my ratings...I so hate the Bushies For DemocRATS I shill...oh, yes, I always willThe one I love, really love, is Hillary...Hillary...she knows she can always count on me So remember...I'm not Dianne...my name is KatieI am perky...she's a wenchIf I had my way...along the highway...she'd be face down...in a deep trench I'm not Dianne

SEATTLE - There's something missing from Playboy magazine's "Women of Starbucks" issue, and it's not just clothing. Of the 10 baristas shown in the issue that hits the stands Tuesday, none is from Seattle, the coffee retailer's home town and birthplace, magazine spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey said Wednesday. Half of those chosen for the eight-page spread are from California, including cover model Signe Nordli of Anaheim. Hennessey said the photography editor couldn't remember how many of the nearly 300 women who applied were from Seattle. Despite the lack of local participants, Playboy has scheduled a magazine signing with Nordli on Monday...

KATIE TO GET HER OWN CHAT SHOW Katie Couric - Photo by: Roger Glazer/DMI SO guess who's got her own one-on-one celebrity sit-down TV interview show coming soon? Guess. Just guess. You'll never guess. Ready? Katie Couric. She'll join Barbara, Diane, Connie, ABC's other female alumni one-namers. As we speak, her people are trolling those people who work for celeb people. Presumably it was part of her upgraded NBC contract. The pool is small. The feeding fish are now many. The syndrome will soon see inverse negative results because, with all the magazine shows, talk shows, celebrity-driven shows, morning...