Earlier this week, we saw the reports in the New York Times that CBS was going to outsource their news to CNN. CBS denied the report, but hot on its heels is an article in the Wall Street Journal that they may outsource their anchorwoman. (Subscription may be required, though the full article seems to be readable, at least for now, if you go in via the Google News portal.)
In any case, it can’t be much fun inside the halls of Black Rock, particularly when a certain pair of clickety stiletto heels is heard approaching, as the Journal notes:
After two years of record-low ratings, both CBS News executives and people close to Katie Couric say that the “CBS Evening News” anchor is likely to leave the network well before her contract expires in 2011 — possibly soon after the presidential inauguration early next year.
Ms. Couric isn’t even halfway through her five-year contract with CBS, which began in June 2006 and pays an annual salary of around $15 million. But CBS executives are under pressure to cut costs and improve ratings for the broadcast, which trails rival newscasts on ABC and NBC by wide margins.
Her departure would cap a difficult episode for CBS, which brought Ms. Couric to the network with considerable fanfare in a bid to catapult “Evening News” back into first place. Excluding several weeks of her tenure, Ms. Couric never bested the ratings of interim anchor Bob Schieffer, who was named to host the broadcast temporarily after “Evening News” anchor Dan Rather left the newscast in the wake of a discredited report on George W. Bush’s National Guard service.
And speaking of Dan, his little-watched cable network has scored an audacious interview for an upcoming show. Courage. (Or Hope. Or Audacity. Or whatever the sign-off du jour from RatherLand is these days.)
