Moving backwards: Network news losing battle of gravitas

by David Vaina

     It was fast out of the gate but clearly it hasn't been an easy fall for CBS News and its new anchor Katie Couric. She debuted with an astonishing 13.6 million viewers back in September, an increase of roughly 80 percent over Bob Schieffer's ratings when he stepped down and the largest audience for CBS News in eight years. But after her first week, and after the curiosity factor had long disappeared, her audience began to shrink.

     By Halloween, Couric's average audience was just 7.3 million, the exact number Schieffer recorded the same time a year ago. She trailed ABC's Charlie Gibson by 1.1 million and was even further behind perennial leader, NBC's Brian Williams, who held the top spot with 8.9 million viewers.

     Television critics, meanwhile, offered Couric little sympathy. Some, including the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's Tom Jicha, have urged CBS News to abandon the Couric experiment of lighter fare and offer a more traditional newscast: "When you only have 22 minutes to present the world and put it in context, you don't need gimmicks like 'Free Speech' and enterprise pieces that reiterate the obvious-Halloween costumes are becoming risqué, to cite one recent example. Besides, the audience gets its fill of fluff from local newscasts."

     However, the dirty, but not so little, secret in television, is that network news broadcasts are in serious trouble and could even face extinction in a generation or two. Viewers are getting older and too often the black ink has been turning to red as profits have become harder to come by. And then there is the 800-pound gorilla in the room-the Internet.

     Critics have been skeptical of Couric since her name was first mentioned as the permanent successor on the network Edward R. Murrow helped build by broadcasting from a rooftop in London as Hitler's bombs fell from the sky. Indeed, Couric may not be one of "Murrow's boys," but when one looks at her career and the focus on lighter fare that the "CBS Evening News" has adopted since she debuted, one cannot help but wonder if the news division at CBS is not reaching back to capture the magic from another chapter in network television's history.

The Beginning
     Before network television could build any sort of momentum, World War II erupted and the industry's energies were redirected to radio. But in 1948 when coaxial cables connected major markets around the country, television was given an opportunity to get off the ground again, and CBS broadcast the first news program in August 1948.

     In 1950, however, just 9 percent of American households owned a television, and the industry underwent some rather difficult growing pains. As Don Hewitt, legendary producer of "60 Minutes," said: "It was like a bunch of kids playing with Play Doh … We had no idea what we were doing in the early days. It was so horse and buggy and fun. Nobody knew what he was doing, but you didn't care because who had a television set?" At this time, newspapers and to a lesser extent, radio, were still Americans' primary news sources. Television, therefore, needed to distinguish itself and find its own voice to compete with other mass media.

     Though television, as Marshall McCluhan postulated, is a cool medium and we like to think of the classic news anchor as one with a calm, detached and steady persona dripping with gravity, particularly during a national crisis, the roots of network news are in show business. As Barbara Matusow writes: "[B]roadcast news grew up as an off shoot of large entertainment corporations whose real business is promoting the sale of products, and personality turned out to be the greatest selling device ever discovered. Personality was the key to radio's phenomenal success, and no one saw any reason to change the formula on TV, whether the program format was comedy, variety or news."

     In 1956, when NBC News needed to find an anchor in time for the 1956 presidential conventions, its list of candidates not only included broadcasters like Chet Huntley but a famous actor, Jimmy Stewart. News, so it seemed, could have used a good showman.

     There also seemed to be a blurry line between news and entertainment over at ABC, which originated as a castoff from NBC. In its short history, the fledgling network was a distant third to NBC and CBS, and profits and viewers were elusive. In 1953, the network named John Charles Daly as its evening news anchor. While Daly could offer experience as a senior correspondent for CBS during World War II, he was perhaps most famous for being the host of "What's My Line?," a game show that Daly moderated for 17 years on rival CBS.

Golden Age
     By the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, network television news would begin to be known for coverage grounded in a serious, hard-news tradition, and reported by the industry's most iconic names: Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC, and then in April 1962, Walter Cronkite at CBS.

     For network news, 1963 would prove to be a turning point. For the first time, it had surpassed newspapers as the primary source for a majority of Americans. During the 1963 funeral proceedings for President Kennedy, an estimated 95 percent of American households were tuned in to one of the three networks. It was also at this time the evening news broadcast expanded from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, a sign the networks were taking news much more seriously.

     Then, a few years later, news became a profitable venture. "60 Minutes," for example, was launched in the late 1960s, and, though it took several years to climb into the top 20, it eventually came to be regarded as the most profitable television show of all time.

     Indeed, network television had become so powerful that politicians went on the attack. In November 1969, Vice President Spiro Agnew cautioned the American public of a "little group of men who…wield a free hand in selecting, presenting and interpreting the great issues in our nation…Is it not fair and relevant to question [the] concentration [of power] in the hands of a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by the government?"

     The 1970s was another good decade for network news. At decade's end, television was the only mass medium with a growing audience. Newspaper readership had peaked, and more Americans than ever reported getting news from television. But by the end of the decade, network television would be challenged.

The Decline
     The 1980s was a rough period for network television news. In his book on the three networks, "Three Blind Mice," Ken Auletta notes that between 1981 and 1987, the average annual costs at NBC News expanded faster (11.4 percent) than its revenues (9.2 percent). This meant losses. At NBC News, the bottom-line loss in 1987 was estimated at $91 million.

     Over at CBS, billionaire financier Larry Tisch had taken control of the network by 1986 and as part of his strategy to please Wall Street, ordered massive cuts, gutted overseas bureaus and dismissed hundreds of news people, including on-air reporters. As long-time news anchor Dan Rather wrote in The New York Times, CBS News had gone "From Murrow to mediocrity."

     Fast forward to the 21st century. In 2005, 27 million Americans regularly watched an evening news broadcast, according to Nielsen Media Research; in 1980, the audience size had been 52.1 million. Survey research also illustrates this bleeding. In the summer of 2006, fewer than three in 10 (28 percent) Americans said they were regular watchers of the national nightly network news on CBS, ABC or NBC. Moreover, just 9 percent of those 18 to 29 years old reported regularly watching the network news. Longer work commutes, the widespread availability of cable television, and the emergence of the Internet had all chipped away at the dominance the industry lost many years ago.

     The current economic picture doesn't look much better. Revenue from the evening news at ABC fell from $169 million in 2000 to $151 million in 2004, according to the most recent data from TNS Media Intelligence. At NBC there were significant losses as well: $172 million in 2000 had dropped to $155 million in revenues by 2004. Only CBS managed to buck the trend. For 2000, revenues were $142 million, but climbed to $149 million in 2004.

     But though its revenues increased, the audience for CBS News kept the broadcast in dead last. In 2004, the news division drew controversy when the longtime face of the evening news, Dan Rather, decided to run a story on President Bush's National Guard service based on documents that had not been properly authenticated. Rather ultimately stepped down from the anchor chair in March 2005, and only after the news division's dirty laundry had been much publicized in a 200-page report on the incident. It appeared CBS News had hit rock bottom.

Back to the Future?
     It was clear from the start CBS News wanted to head in a new direction. One of the more notable names thrown around as a possible successor to Rather was Jon Stewart, the host of the "Daily Show" on Comedy Central. Stewart's show is a half-hour satirical look at news and current events and often provides clever media criticism. But the thrust of the program is to generate laughs. In short, he is a showman for news junkies.

     CBS, of course, would ultimately turn to the long-time queen (and probably king, too) of morning news. Over at NBC News, Couric's "Today Show" had been number one for 538 straight weeks. It was also a cash cow for NBC, bringing in an estimated $571 million last year in advertising revenue.

     In an essay written for The New Yorker last year, Ken Auletta pointed out that for its first nine years, the "Today Show" was part of NBC's entertainment division, with its anchor "regularly joined on the air by a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs." While no chimpanzees ever joined Couric on the air, entertaining viewers with light programming arguably remained a priority. Perhaps one of the most illustrative moments of Couric's tenure at "Today" came when she appeared in a SpongeBob Squarepants costume one morning.

     When it was announced Couric was to become the next anchor at CBS, her defenders were quick to highlight her hard-news experience, including her years as a Pentagon correspondent. But a tell-tale comment made to the press before her debut indicated there would be a limit to how hard the news would be: "We heard from many people that news is just too depressing. Obviously, we can't sugarcoat what's going on, but there are cases where we can be more solution-oriented," Couric said.

     Behind Couric's bubbly personality, CBS was poised to pull a page from the playbook used in the 1950s. This strategy suggested more pieces that would make Americans smile. Hopefully, there would be more water-cooler moments too. And unfortunately, less hard news. In a content analysis of Couric's first week in the anchor chair, network television analyst Andrew Tyndall found that the amount of hard news was less than half the amount that rivals NBC and ABC had offered.

     Though Couric's ratings continue to fall, there is a certain logic for CBS to offer a broadcast that looks back to a time when one's skills as a showman competed with one's news credentials. If it worked for television 50 years ago when it needed to surpass newspapers, why shouldn't it work again? And as some critics observed, it often takes several years for a new anchor to reach the top so Couric's early ratings probably shouldn't be scrutinized too much. Couric may very well push network television in a completely new direction in a few years with the evening news eventually resembling the lighter fare of morning news. And surely Couric's $15 million-a-year contract suggests CBS management is confident she is the future, and it will only be a matter of time for the audience to catch up.

     Indeed, there is more uncertainty than anything else right now. But for an industry rapidly approaching irrelevancy, boldness surely needs to be the name of the game.

     David Vaina is a research associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism. He lives in Washington, D.C.