Katie Couric kicks off with a big lie

"Out of curiosity, I did a little 'Googling' for the word 'blog.' And one of the first entries that popped up was a guy by the name of Henry Blogg … Reading his story reminded me of some wisdom that was passed on to me when I was deciding whether or not I should come to CBS…. A good friend told me: 'Katie, a boat is always safe in the harbor. But it’s not what it was built for..."

Katie Couric hasn’t even plopped her photoshopped rump into the big seat yet, and already she’s being dishonest with her audience. Hours before her debut on the CBS Evening News, CBS has launched a “blog” (just like NBC’s Brian Williams), purportedly written by Couric herself.

But a quick scan makes it obvious that, despite the use of the first person on the posting, the multi-million dollar diva, on the eve of her big moment, has not taken time to google the word "blog" or type out this crap:

Today we begin “Couric & Co.” Welcome! I’m glad you found us. Pull up a chair and stay a while. There’s a lot going on in the world, and we have a lot to talk about…

“In the little village that is CBS News, you might consider “Couric & Co” the coffee house on the corner, where something is always brewing...

I can’t be here all day, every day, so some visitors will be dropping by – the “company” of “Couric & Co.”…

A footnote: out of curiosity, I did a little “Googling” for the word “blog.” And one of the first entries that popped up was a guy by the name of Henry Blogg . He lived long before the age of the internet. But his story is quite remarkable. He was apparently an accomplished sailor – a legendary lifeboatman, to be exact – who weathered fierce storms while doing his job, rowing out to sea. It took guts – and some muscle – to venture out into the unknown like that.

Reading his story reminded me of some wisdom that was passed on to me when I was deciding whether or not I should come to CBS. I was anxious about making a career change. But a good friend told me: “Katie, a boat is always safe in the harbor. But it’s not what it was built for”…

Like Henry Blogg, this blog is shoving off from the harbor, and heading out to a mysterious and uncharted sea… Hopefully, we won't all end up like Gilligan...

Do you believe Katie Couric wrote that? Do you believe a good friend convinced her with a boat metaphor? If you do, I have some photocopies of old National Guard documents you can rush to air.

This is the equivalent of Dan Rather’s New York Times Op Ed pieces being written by his producer. It’s dishonest. And how can we as an audience be expected to trust anything out of this woman's mouth if she's BS-ing us out of the gate?

By the way, Gilligan lasted three seasons. Katie should be so lucky.

Why don't people watch Katie Couric? She lies.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Katie Couric said she’s not going anywhere -- at least not any time soon.

"Facing the press for the first time since reports surfaced this spring that she was preparing to leave the CBS News anchor chair after the presidential election, Couric said today that she’s staying put.

“'We have no plans to part company any time soon,' Couric said. 'And there were a lot of speculative pieces that I think got, quite frankly, spun out of control.'

"...The anchor referred obliquely to talks she had with CBS executives earlier this year about her future on the broadcast. In the discussions, Couric and the network officials agreed to table any decision until after the presidential election.

“'You know, we always assess how the show is doing and what direction we want to go in. And so clearly when you work for an organization you have ongoing discussions,' Couric said. 'But I’m very committed to the people here.'”

Network newsreaders ought to talk straight. Katie's "denial" is Clintonesque in its equivocation. Of course she's leaving soon. the network just doesn't want to blow off the election ratings and they can't let her walk until Lara Logan is back from maternity leave.

Parsing the words to squeeze out the real meaning:

"any time soon."

"ongoing discussions."

Couric promises CBS Tabloid Evening News

As Katie Couric prepares to plop into Dan Rather’s old chair, she says ready to take the homey bully pulpit and turn it into tabloid feeling fest. She said so, in her own words, as she dropped into Las Vegas yesterday to give a perky pep talk to the suits from the CBS affiliates, in speech that was taken right out of the landmark book, Tabloid Baby, and could well have been the call to arms Peter Brennan gave the A Current Affair troops twenty years ago.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Couric hopes to bring a "humanistic, more accessible" approach to her job.

Couric predicted that the “pretentious era" of the evening-news anchor is going to be a thing of the past.

"The audience is more sophisticated than we give them credit for -- they don't want a mechanical Ted Baxter… I'm a serious, caring, compassionate person. I hope that comes out. ... People want a multidimensional (news anchor) and not someone they can put in a box…”

Couric said she thinks that the media are "held captive by spin," choosing to repeat "two separate spins" rather than search for the facts in a story. She also said the news has become somewhat inaccessible, seemingly being programmed for inside-the-Beltway policymakers and other reporters rather than for at-home viewers.

"We need to be more level with viewers and explain the issues in a plain-spoken way," she said.

To top it off, CBS boss Leslie Moonves told of how he wooed Couric to the network, by going out for drinks, then taking the party to the rec room!

"We probably drank more bottles of wine on my couch -- don't worry, my wife was in the next room!"

We knew Les was out to destroy the liberal, powerful CBS News, but getting drunk with the star while wifey (the lowly employee he hit on, banged in an extramarital affair, then married) sleeps on the other side of the wall? That’s right out of the Tabloid Baby playbook! (And we're not talking about Maury Povich. Maury's a class act. We just like the couple comparison...)

We know Katie’s read Tabloid Baby. The week the networks banned Tabloid Baby’s author from their shows, a copy was delivered to her former valet/producer Jeff Zucker while he was in the hospital. So quit wasting time. read the book and see what we mean.

Katie Couric didn't work out. Duh.

So who's really surprised that Katie Couric's time at the CBS Evening News didn't work out? From the start, we saw the injection of the perky pudgy celebrity into the CBS News hot seat as Les Moonves' way of throwing a bomb into CBS News and taking out the too-powerful nabobs with their liberal agenda. And with Katie's imminent departure announced the same week it's "leaked" that the news division may soon be farming out field work to CNN producers and reporters, it appears that Moonves' plan is unfolding, after all.

It's not bragging to say we were laughing at the idea as far back as December 2005, when we wrote:

"Here’s some free advice for Sean McManus and Les Moonves and CBS News. Save the $20 million a year. Katie Couric’s not worth it. She’s a former cutie who’s been temporarily retooled into a glamour puss. She’s pushing fifty. She’s not going to age well, physically or emotionally. And people don’t like to work with her. Katie’s a morning show host. Reading the TelePrompter and gravitas ain’t her shtick. Give her a talk show and move on.

"Besides, it’s a new century. The network news half hour is over. It doesn’t matter!"

But for real prescience, there was LA Dodger Jon at the neglected (by him) Hollywood Thoughts, who, two years ago in a post entitled "Katie Couric is the new Kathie Lee, "predicted the entire timetable (with the bizarre twist that Katie's imminent departure is announced the same week Kathie Lee Gifford climbs on board the Today show).

And if we all knew it wasn't going to work, CBS had to know. Right? Just like the people at Fox had to know that Chevy Chase would never work as a talk show host. Right? We realize the newsies in the CBS "fishbowl" are out of touch with America, but the corporate overlords can't be that out of touch with reality. We'll stick with our theory that there was a lot more to the Katie Couric era than has yet been revealed. And repeat our suggestion that Ann Curry's a better choice.

The Morning After: Bye Bye, News Babes

One of the highlights of the CBS Evening News with old Bob Schieffer is his rotating gaggle of newschicks, these beautiful Charlie's Angels types jetting around the world, gals like Lara Logan (dubbed "34D Lara” by The London Sun after underwear modeling shots were revealed), Trish Regan and Serena Altschul.

We fear we will be seeing far less of them and more Steve Hartman as little chubby Katie takes the reins.

Funny how the PR machine has spun dry Katie Couric’s image from the fearsome tyrant, “at the first sound of (whose) peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights...", back to the spunky, perky, loveable squeezeball who’ll bring fun and sun to old CBS.

Bill Carter leads today's New York Times Couric story with one of his patented intimate scenes, this one around the Couric “dinner table,” as Katie runs the CBS balloon past her two daughters:

…Ellie, 14, at once voted for the jump to CBS, pointing out that mealtime was certainly no problem because, thanks to her mother's unusual schedule, they had been eating "early-bird dinners" for their entire lives, while almost everyone else they knew did not sit down to eat until 7 or 7:30.

When Ms. Couric turned to Carrie, 10, she got an equally quick response. Carrie said she would choose CBS as well, because that would make her mother "the first woman in that job.”

Does that scene ring true? It doesn’t ring true to us, not like Carter’s Jay Leno-hiding-in-the-NBC-broom-closet scene. We don’t buy it. Sounds like phony-baloney PR at work.

Check out the Epilogue to Tabloid Baby. Katie and Matt Lauer are mentioned specifically as the new standard bearers of tabloid journalism on the Today show. The tabloid-“mainstream” inbreeding has been going on for years now. And the injection of spunkball Couric into the CBS News bubble is only the latest step in Les Moonves’ deliberate destruction and tabloidization—or, darkly, the Entertainmenttionightatization-- of CBS News.

It’s got little to do with the Evening News job (the "managing editor" title they tossed her devalues that role on resumes, past and present-- and, oddly, her "from the heart" Today show farewell, read off a TelePrompter script, showed that newsreading is not Katie's forte). That stained throne is not what it was. ABC showed how little they think of it when they turned theirs over to Bob Woodruff and Liz Vargas, then put Woodruff in harm’s way (Vargas acted out her nonchalance when she set herself up for immediate pregnancy leave). NBC gave the seat to pretender-in-waiting Brian Williams. They’re not the premiere broadcasters of our day and not even the best qualified in their respective news departments. Katie won’t be grinning her gummy grin for the Depends and Metamucil crowd for long. We agree with Hollywood Thoughts on that one.

A note about her Today show replacement, Meredith Vieira: We knew Meredith long ago when she was a local news reporter for WCBS-TV. In fact, in our very first weeks living in New York City, we ran into the young Vieira in the acrid haze on 23rd Street as she did a live shot about the pier fires that covered Manhattan in grimy smoke. She would've fit in with Schieffer's Angels in those days.

She didn't wear well on The View. But who would?

No talk about ageism here. Despite all the skinny chiquitas wrassling for Katie’s job, Meredith is FIFTY-TWO.

Turkey time!

It's a good thing they put America's most trusted tabloid news family at the helm of Thankgsiving parade coverage.

I guess if there'd been a terror attack at Macy's, they'd have cut to 'Miracle on 34th Street.'

From today's New York Times:

NBC did not interrupt its broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade yesterday to bring viewers the news that an M&M balloon had crashed into a light pole, injuring two sisters.

In fact, when the time came in the tightly scripted three-hour program for the M&Ms' appearance, NBC weaved in tape of the balloon crossing the finish line at last year's parade - even as the damaged balloon itself was being dragged from the accident scene. At 11:47 a.m., as an 11-year-old girl and her 26-year-old sister were being treated for injuries, the parade's on-air announcers - Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker - kept up their light-hearted repartee from Herald Square, where the parade ends...

At 11:47 a.m., about 7 minutes after the accident, the screen image faded from live coverage of a high school marching band from Kennesaw, Ga., to last year's tape of the M&M balloon. Ms. Couric, advising the audience that it was now looking at old tape, riffed on the balloon's concept of M&M's in distress.

"Now, because of today's windy conditions," Ms. Couric told viewers, "these characters are on video, and if we told you they were not in a panic, we'd be full of hot air."

Mr. Lauer, Ms. Couric's co-anchor on the "Today" show, chimed in: "You may be thinking 'color us clueless' as they flirt with trouble, with Yellow hanging on by a thread and Red struggling to keep his best buddy from flying off into the blue."

Mr. Roker then spoke his lines: "Will these classic candymen get out of this delicious dilemma? Hard to say, but when it comes to sweetness, Yellow and Red continue to melt your heart, but not in your hand."

...After that, it was on to the Pillsbury Doughboy, and, bringing up the rear, Santa and his wife. "Old Saint Nick and Mrs. Claus, his wife of, what, 200 years?" Ms. Couric said. "What a marriage. What a team!"

With that, the parade was over.

"It's obvious the three of us have had a great time today," Mr. Lauer concluded, "and we hope all of you did as well."

Couric: From Fun to Nun

Are they serious with this? Leave it to CBS News to pay all that money for Katie Couric and then dress her up like Sister Bertrille.

This is old Bob Schieffer in his last night on Dan Rather's set, after an eighteen-month Viagra high with the CBS Newsbabes, turning the show over to one of the nuns from our Vatican II schooldays. This is their idea of making Katie Couric acceptably "serious" to read the Teleprompter for the Depends and Metamucil set? She's going up against Brian Williams, for Chrissakes!

Les. Are you watching this? Dude, drop the bomb. These people are wacked.

Then again, maybe they figure that black is slimming.

Let us pray... that old Bob isn't covering up what we think he's covering up...

The Katie Couric Countdown:
Five fingers to liftoff!


(Just how wacked is CBS News? Read the introduction to Tabloid Baby, the book that CBS veteran Paula Zahn told us "got it exactly right.")

UPDATE: Ray Richmond of The Hollywood Reporter, the dean of entertainment-- and entertaining-- commentary, weighs in with his usual brilliant perspective at Past Deadline.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

We figured Katie Couric’s disingenuous comments about not caring about ratings at the CBS Evening News were an encrypted challenge or at least a cry for help. We also were certain there’d be fallout and today there is, with word that her executive producer will be replaced by a network good ole boy who’ll help CBS follow the blowing winds and punch the show back into the old-fashioned mode that everyone will be comfortable with.

We told you a month before Couric’s debut that executive producer Rome Hartman wasn’t up for the job. He was a CBS lifer, promoted from within, a step removed from America, and coming up with lame "innovations" like outsider commentaries and touchy-feely segments at a time Les Moonves was supposedly dropping a neutron bomb in the corrupt old CBS News operation:

TV news execs may gut a division and dump a show, but when it comes to getting the replacement on the air, they fall back on the comfort factor and rely on the same producers who worked on and created the shows of the past. New executive producer Rome Hartman, we’re sure, is a very nice fellow. But he’s been with CBS News since 1983! He’s a CBS lifer. He’s indoctrinated in the CBS way of life (see the Prologue to Tabloid Baby) and hasn’t experienced the world or newsgathering outside the privileged rarified CBS fishbowl. Hint: New blood. New ideas…

Rick Kaplan is no saviour. He's status quo. He was EP of Peter Jennings’ news show back in the 90s before he made messes at CNN and MSNBC: a big, tall, loud dickswinger who’ll make some rude noises in the hushed halls of CBS, someone who won’t be awed or bullied by Couric and who’ll make the show look a lot more like the ones on ABC and NBC that are kicking CBS’s ass-- and isn't it funny that it's old Charlie Gibson's tired old show on ABC that everyone's chasing). Maybe he’ll even send Katie to Iraq.

It doesn't matter. It’s all temporary, just another stop on Katie’s journey to afternoon talk.

CBS' 34D Lara flaunts what Katie Couric cannot

That Lara Logan is the kind of "chief foreign correspondent" we like. She's got a Marvel Comics name, an exotic accent and doesn't have a mug like Christina Amanpour. And now the sexy CBS newsgal, star of the Katie Couric evening news show, and former bikini model known in the British tabs as "34D Lara," is making news for landing an exclusive interview with Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf for tonight's 60 Minutes.

Lara has worked hard to pretend to try to escape the sex kitten image and her swimsuit modelling past, so it's ver-r-r-r-ry interesting that in a nod to all the perv-ez among her fanbase, she and the CBS publicity machine included in the latest "how I got that scoop" story that Lara was "vacationing on a beach near her South African hometown when she received a message on her BlackBerry telling her of the (Bhutto) attack in Rawalpindi," and that when she arrived in Pakistan for the major news coup, "her suitcase with bikinis and other beachwear made it to Islamabad; the suitcase with the rest of her clothes did not."

Sorry. Did you miss that?

"Her suitcase with bikinis
and other beachwear
made it to Islamabad."

Now, that's Tabloid 101! And that's a shot across the bow. Who needs a Burberry when you travel on assignment with a suitcase full of bikinis? And, as we've been advising in our free consultation to CBS News since the days Katie Couric (left) was first being considered for the Evening News gig, who needs Katie when you've got a real, fearless, experienced globetrotting 21st century superstar sexpot reporter with such a great future behind her?

Katie Couric tells Israel she's a victim of "sexism"

"I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance,
and realizing what Hillary Clinton might have realized
not long ago: that sexism in the American society
is more common than racism,
and certainly more acceptable or forgivable."
--Katie Couric, CBS News

Katie Couric is in Israel for the first time, on vacation while Barack Obama is in Iraq, yet acting like she's campaigning, treated and acting like a celebrity, and talking about herself and her plight, as in the following "monologue" in Tel Aviv that's quoted in Haaretz:

"I have no doubt in my heart that I made the right move, accepting the CBS offer. I would have regretted it otherwise. It's true that the pressure was immense and the expectations almost impossible. One person cannot perform such miracles and transform a whole network on his own.

"It's also true I'm not doing today exactly what I've been brought to do, and that my chance to express myself is fairly limited in the 22-minutes format, but I still enjoy my work, I think it's important and fascinating, and do believe we can make a change with time, bit by bit.

"Unfortunately I have found out that many viewers are afraid of change. The glory days of TV news are over, and the media landscape has been dramatically changed. News is available now for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and everybody fights for the last pieces of the shrinking pie. The corporate pressure and the ratings terror are intensifying all the time, and the situation is not simple. I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance, and realizing what Hillary Clinton might have realized not long ago: that sexism in the American society is more common than racism, and certainly more acceptable or forgivable. In any case, I think my post and Hillary's race are important steps in the right direction."

She added:

"My mother is Jewish, but I've been raised as a Presbyterian. I'm interested in finding out more about these roots."

At least Katie kept that guy who looks like k.d. lang

Women Scarcer On Evening News
10/23/2006

B&C Contributing Editor Andrew Tyndall analyzed the first six weeks of Katie Couric’s tenure atop the CBS Evening News and found that woman have gotten fewer assignments.

When former Today host Katie Couric arrived at the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News just six weeks ago, much was made of the fact that she—unlike Barbara Walters, Connie Chung and Elizabeth Vargas before her—was the first solo female nightly-news anchor. But that has not translated to a more female-centric Evening News, at least on the correspondent side.

In fact, since Couric’s arrival, women have received 40% fewer assignments than they did under her predecessor, Bob Schieffer. Men, meanwhile, have seen no cutback in their workload...

We called it back in April in an item entitled "The Morning After: Bye Bye, News Babes." We knew then that Katie's arrival would banish the younger, brighter competition. And when the producers threw most of Katie's debut show to former swimsuit model Lara Logan, the deal was sealed.

Look at the photos below and guess the one who has a regular spot on the Katie show:

CBS Sports' US Open Sore

A Tabloid Baby contributor weighs in on last night in televised sports:

I'm watching the late-night US Open Tennis Roundup. The respectable Patrick McEnroe (Davis Cup captain and brother of John, who was once married to Tatum O'Neal and confessed to coke and miscreant behavior before becoming the darling of tennis media commentators) is host.

Now forget Andre Agassi's amazing tennis and history and the brilliance of Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player who ever lived...

Forget all that, because in the midst of all this, Patrick McEnroe's co-host of CBS's late-night roundup, is...

Pat O'Brien!!! (See Pat O'Brien links.)

When are they gonna start drug testing the sports guys who keep insisting on drug testing??? Tennis is a pure and beautiful sport and TV nets that cover it should have to do a urine test to prove that they don’t have any Pat O'Brien in their system.

Thanks, Tabloid Baby contributor. A tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to you.

But the question remains. How did Pat O’Brien make it back to CBS Sports, after flushing away his credibility with years of shilling as host of infotainment shows like Access Hollywood and The Insider and then weathering a humiliating phone sex, swinging, booze and drug scandal, rehab and a prime time (CBS!) spanking by Dr. Phil?

O’Brien tells the Boston Globe it was Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports-- and, as of last October, president of CBS News:

"When I left (CBS Sports in the 1990s) , Sean McManus, who was just taking over as head of CBS Sports, said, `We're both young men, we'll work together again,' and sure enough, here we are."

McManus, now president of CBS News and Sports, said it made sense to have O'Brien host the late-night show that features entertainment as much as it does tennis; the Gin Blossoms performed the other night.

"We try to make it fun, and thought Pat's had a pretty high profile in sports and thought we might add some different flavor, and so far it's worked out really well," McManus said.

O'Brien, 58, said he has no problem going from entertainment to sports ``because there's no line anymore between the two. Sports stars are entertainers, and entertainers want to be in sports."

On the news side, of course, McManus’ latest hire is Katie Couric.

Starting to see the connections? Infotainment? CBS Sports? CBS News? The Insider? The CBS Evening News? The Gin Blossoms? Phone sex? Pat O’Brien? Katie Couric?

(A final note: As Pat’s high times get even higher, we’re sad to see that his galpal Betsy no longer has a travelogue blog…)


The Katie Couric Countdown:
Three fingers to liftoff!

Katie Couric's Bush is showing... and telling

George W. Bush as a guest on Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News show debut?

They may be pulling old Walter Cronkite out of the yacht bunk where he’s been shtupping Carly Simon’s sister to introduce their new anchorgal when she ushers in the fuzzier, perkier Evening News era next Tuesday (commentaries and all!), but with the Bush smooch, Les Moonves is leaving no doubt about it: the fight is on to make sure the age of the liberal, crusading, Burberry-trenchcoat, arugula-chomping, Upper West Side out-of-touch, colonial, left-wing, conservative-bashing, slanted, sheltered CBS News is over!

Making nice with the Bush administration is a big statement. And though much of the Old Guard is still behind the scenes at the Evening News, the Moonves bomb is a smart one. Don’t expect her executive producer to last forever.

The Katie Couric Countdown:
Seven fingers to liftoff!