Is Katie Couric On Her Way Out?
Katie Couric hasn’t redeemed the No. 3 newscast. Can she survive as anchor?
Her hiring by CBS started as a rumor, so I wouldn’t dismiss this too quickly.Â
CBS executives deny it, but there’s a growing feeling within the network that Katie Couric is an expensive, unfixable mistake.
So unfixable that Couric – the first woman to anchor a network nightly newscast solo – may leave CBS Evening News, probably after the 2008 presidential elections, to assume another role at the network, CBS sources say.
I don’t see her staying on with the network in any other capacity.Â
“It’s a disaster. Everybody knows it’s not working. CBS may not cut her loose, but I guarantee you, somebody’s thinking about it. We’re all hunkered down, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Seven correspondents, producers and executives at CBS and other networks interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity, given the sensitive nature of the Couric situation.
Couric and CBS were a bad fit from the start.
“From the moment she walked in here, she held herself above everybody else,” says a CBS staffer. “We had to live up to her standards. . . . CBS has never dealt in this realm of celebrity before.”
7 people spoke? Pretty specific…but alas the network denies it
In separate interviews, CBS News president Sean McManus and Evening News executive producer Rick Kaplan vehemently deny that Couric’s future as anchor of the broadcast is in peril.
Couric “is the current anchor and the anchor of the future,” McManus says. “Everyone at the network, from my boss [CBS Corp. president and chief executive Leslie Moonves] on down, is 100 percent behind her.”
Everyone is 100% behind figuring out how to make themselves look good for a terrible decision.
 Matthew Sheffield has more
April 23, 2007 - 09:25 AM on April 23rd, 2007
Rick Kaplan is the Clintonista who drifted from CNN to ABC to CBS making sure the news is safe for Liberals.
April 25, 2007 - 01:54 PM on April 25th, 2007
Everyone at the network, from my boss [CBS Corp. president and chief executive Leslie Moonves] on down, is 100 percent behind her.â€
Is this guy a Lawyer? Because that would explain such a transparent lie. When a lawyer says something tlike that, the truth is they are “0% behind her”. The truth is almost always 180 degrees from what the lawyer asserted.