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Still in Third Place, but Working Hard to Move Up
Diane Sawyer, a host of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” looked an awful lot like a globe-trotting, war-seasoned evening news anchor as she donned a head scarf to confront the president of Iran on Monday’s evening news.
On the “CBS Evening News” that same night, Katie Couric seemed to be reliving her heyday at NBC’s “Today” with a feature on the health benefits of napping. “The old saying ‘You snooze, you lose’ has it all wrong,” Ms. Couric said.
It’s a weird day-for-night role reversal for the two most famous women in television news.
Perhaps restless in her morning job now that her former co-host, Charles Gibson, is the anchor of ABC’s evening news program, Ms. Sawyer seems intent on scoring gravitas points with show-stealing trips to North Korea last October and, most recently, Syria and Iran. In Tehran she even mingled with an anti-American mob to get a feel for the Persian street.
“Do you not like me?” she asked an Iranian chanting “Death to America” slogans. (He said it wasn’t personal.) Outside the former American embassy, she reminisced about covering the Iranian revolution in 1979. “It was a truly dangerous place for Americans,” she said. “Back then, I remember thugs threatened to cut off my forbidden lipstick with razor blades.”
Ms. Couric, whose move to CBS last September to become the first solo female anchor of a network evening news program was hailed as a milestone, has yet to jolt CBS out of third place. But she is trying: she recently introduced a segment, “The American Spirit,” in which she spiritedly interviews inspiring Americans all over the country, hoping to enliven the newscast with some of her trademark early-morning pep and pizazz — the “Today”-ification of the “CBS Evening News.”
All the evening newscasts carve time out for health and feel-good human interest stories. NBC’s Brian Williams, who is usually in first place, interviewed his own father on Monday for a special series on how baby boomers care for their elderly parents.
And Mr. Gibson, a No. 2 who seems disinclined to try harder, was in Chicago while Ms. Sawyer was in Tehran, anchoring from an outdoor balcony in a scarf and a topcoat for no apparent reason other than demonstrating that he can confront the cold. He did provide a voice-over narration for a feature about a gung-ho marine who gave up the corps to donate a kidney to his father, but the interview itself was conducted by a producer who stayed out of camera range. On Tuesday Mr. Gibson spent the day behind the scenes at O’Hare International Airport to cover storm-related problems firsthand.
But Ms. Couric, who was wooed by CBS for her personality and star power, does more features, more often. And after nearly six months of tinkering, Ms. Couric’s show does look and sound different from the other two. For one thing, female correspondents are more prominent: on some nights, only one or two male correspondents make it to the air.
Most anchors go to the scene of big stories like hurricanes and the State of the Union address. Ms. Couric prefers to be in the field for small stories: a woman who created a networking Web site for businesswomen; a billionaire scientist who donated $50 million to recruit talented math and science teachers.
Inevitably, hard news gets squeezed by the soft. For the week of Feb. 5-9, ABC and NBC each devoted a total of 14 minutes to the Iraq war, according to the Tyndall Report, a newsletter that tracks the three evening newscasts. CBS’s total for the week was 5 minutes.
So far, the personal touch hasn’t healed CBS’s wounded ratings, but lately there has been some sign of improvement. Last week Ms. Couric had close to eight million viewers — the highest number since her debut in September, though Super Bowl exposure may have helped. CBS was also the only one of the three networks whose share of the most elusive demographic, viewers 18 to 49, was higher than the same week a year ago. CBS still trails far behind ABC and NBC, which are often neck and neck.
Sometimes Ms. Couric’s interviews can be enlightening: she went to San Diego County in October to talk to financially strained wives of servicemen in Iraq who rely on charitable food handouts to make ends meet.
Others are lurid daytime “gets” disguised as news scoops, like a fireside interview in December with the tearful widow of Kelly James, one of three climbers who died after getting lost on Mount Hood.
Ms. Couric’s style is informal, except when it’s not. She greets viewers with the jaunty words “Hi, everyone,” then reads off the top news stories with an air of burdened gravity.
Her male rivals always wear formal suits and ties. (Mr. Williams is a bit of a Savile Row dandy, whereas Mr. Gibson favors a rumpled J. Press look.) Ms. Couric’s on-air wardrobe is more mercurial: a casual navy turtleneck one night, pearls and dark suit the next. It can be distracting, which is odd, given Ms. Couric’s complaints about being held to a different standard because of her sex. Society’s obsessive focus on a newswoman’s hair and outfits is such a sore point that it’s surprising she hasn’t settled on a more consistent look. In the battle to change the culture, frequent sartorial makeovers stoke unwanted attention rather than defuse it.
The anchor is not solely responsible for the success of a news broadcast. Experts often cite the lead-in as crucial: the more successful a local news program, the more viewers stay tuned. (On a good week, Oprah Winfrey can boost the ratings of both the local and network news programs that follow her.)
But there is also a bench factor: Mr. Williams’s success is partly his own work, partly the legacy of his predecessor Tom Brokaw and partly the strength of the network’s best reporters: Lisa Myers, David Gregory, Campbell Brown, Tim Russert and, in Baghdad, Richard Engel. ABC also has a lot of firepower in its newsroom, including George Stephanopoulos, the investigative reporter Brian Ross and Martha Raddatz at the White House.
The “CBS Evening News” has a thinner lineup of stars. Lara Logan stands out in Baghdad (sometimes too much), and so does Elizabeth Palmer. But for the most part, CBS correspondents are not as distinctive — or as carefully showcased.
That could be house policy. On their Web sites, NBC and ABC list the biographies of more than 20 correspondents who contribute to the evening news. On cbsnews.com, where Ms. Couric writes a chatty, first-person blog, it’s almost impossible to find a full roster of the evening-news team. It’s the Web equivalent of a shrubbery maze: the “bios” section keeps returning to Ms. Couric, her executive producer and the weekend anchors.
Cults of personality are common in and around the anchor desk. But they are most effective when the personality has a huge cult following.
