Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal broke a story that CBS and Katie Couric have started talking about the possibility that she would give up the anchor spot on the CBS Evening News after the 2008 elections. It’s not the first time this story has made the rounds, but this morning the story was being picked up by other media outlets and appears to have the stink of credibility to it.
The TV news industry blog TVNewser has been chiming in with insider dirt and industry speculation since the story broke yesterday. This post considers who the likely contenders are to take the anchor seat and gives the inside edge to Harry Smith, with Bob Schieffer as a possible dark-horse. This post considers the timing of the story in the wake of last week’s big round of layoffs at CBS O&O stations, many of which saw long-time anchors and other celebrity on-air talent get the axe (here in Boston, for example, WBZ fired sportscaster Bob Lobel, entertainment reported Joyce Kulhawic, and anchor Scott Wahle, all veterans). And this post talks about what might happen for Couric if she steps down — it’s practically a given that she would be made a regular on 60 Minutes, but there’s talk she could jump to CNN and replace Larry King.
CBS News is having a bad couple of weeks. Earlier in the week it was revealed that CBS was considering outsourcing some of its newsgathering operation to CNN, though they later very publicly backed away from that. Paying a mega-star anchor bajillions to host a dud newscast is very hard to justify when you’re firing staff and trying to outsource your basic news operation. Given the now-very-public discussions, it wouldn’t surprise me to see her bail even earlier than November from the nightly news, do 60 Minutes for a short face-saving amount of time, then leave CBS entirely.
