CBS's Moonves Sees Bleak Future For TV News

Lost in yesterday's dust-up between Dan Rather and Les Moonves over Rather's explanation for CBS News's tanking ratings was a bleak--and accurate--portrayal of the future of TV's evening news shows.

In case you missed it, Rather said the CBS Evening News is in a tailspin because CBS (CBS) tried "to bring the 'Today' show ethos to the 'Evening News,' and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience." It is understandable why Moonves dismissed these remarks as sexist, and it's also understandable why Rather wants to believe that things would have been different if he hadn't blown himself up in the Bush-National Guard forgery fracas. But the argument is a sideshow.

Moonves is right that unless CBS can find ways to skew the Evening News audience under 60 years old, the show is toast. He's wrong, however, when he implies that the choice of the right anchor, or style, will accomplish this.

The evening news shows are dying for the same reason the newspapers are dying: the next generation of viewers/readers are getting their news online (or from Jon Stewart). Because the online medium is simply a better medium for delivering news, nothing the TV networks do will change this trend.

Comments

[Malkiel]

Rubbish. You make it obvious you're some kind of right-winger looking for a chance to bash Rather: move on. All Rather was saying, without being too specific, is that Couric doesn't have the right gravitas or intellectual bent to manage the program. Your analysis about network news is totally off base: network news is losing market share because it can't get affiliate time on Cable networks. It's losing share to Cable-specific news networks like CNN and MSNBC and, unfortunately, FOX, not to web news pages. Remember that cable has full penetration into all American households while internet connectivity still has a big chunk to go.

And Les Moonves, like Roger Ailes, is one of those guys who has done his share of damage to American television by dumbing down or replacing important stuff rather than try to make it as good as it can be. Serious and high-quality news reporting is part of meeting the obligation to the public implied by the First Amendment and is obviously critical for sustaining public political discourse; there's a higher obligation to find a formula that makes quality accessible to the people rather than turn it into infotainment hoping for chance viewing...