Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Gee, I’m all broke up about it…CBS News is completely irrelevant and biased. We now live in a world where people can get their news updated by the minute over the Internet from sites like…heh heh…ours.

Katie Couric and CBS News are talking for the first time about her giving up the anchor chair after the November election if her ratings don’t improve, a course that could result in her leaving the network, sources familiar with the situation say.

These sources say the network’s top executives believe Couric is doing an excellent job on the “CBS Evening News,” but that both sides have grown frustrated with a situation in which she seems mired in third place and unable to use the range of talents that made her a superstar in morning television. They stress that a final decision won’t be made until late summer at the earliest.

If Couric is eased out as anchor, CBS plans to offer her either a syndicated talk show or a full-time role on “60 Minutes.” Otherwise, executives have signaled they would release her from her contract to seek a better deal elsewhere.

The discussions are described as amicable but suffused by a sense that CBS’s five-year, $75 million gamble on the former “Today” co-host is not paying off, at least according to the cold, hard Nielsen ratings numbers on which advertising is sold. The executives involved recognize that a significant improvement in the ratings is unlikely. The sources, both within and outside CBS, described the situation on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive personnel issues involved.

If Couric were to leave, it would mean new turmoil for a news division that was rocked by the 2005 ouster of Dan Rather after CBS retracted his story about President Bush’s National Guard service. She succeeded interim anchor Bob Schieffer in September 2006 on a wave of intense publicity but drove away some viewers with a feature-heavy format while also alienating a number of CBS journalists.

Couric admitted last week that the constricted nature of the 22-minute format had left little room for the humor and freewheeling approach that once defined her style. “It’s really hard to show that side of my personality on the evening news, and that’s a frustration for me,” she said.

(Washington Post)