Katie Couric Says Viewers Weren't Ready for Change

Jul 09, 09:50 AM

Current Headlines: Katie Couric has admitted for the first time that switching from breakfast television to the evening anchor's seat at CBS might have been a bad move.

"I have days when I'm like, `Oh, my God, what did I do?'" said Dan Rather's $15 million-a-year successor, in a dramatically frank sign of how difficult her transition has been.

"I think one thing that I realized, looking back at it and analyzing it, is people are very unforgiving and very resistant to change," Couric told this week's New York magazine.

The public reassessment marks a huge change for America's Sweetheart, who burst on to the stodgy network news scene last year as its first solo female anchor. But as her "CBS Evening News" ratings have plunged and her bosses mull changes to the show, Couric cast herself as a survivor _ so far.

"I've gone through a bit of a feeding frenzy and there's blood in the water and I've got some vulnerabilities," she said.

The magazine article reveals how Couric once took out her frustrations on a news editor by slapping his arm repeatedly while telling him not to use the word "sputum" in a story.

"I sort of slapped him around," Couric confessed. "I was aggravated, there's no question about that."

But she also detailed her frustrations with CBS' stingy news spending, after 17 years on NBC's hyper-profitable "Today" show.

"Often the first question people would ask about a story is, `How much does it cost?' And I didn't really experience that a lot at NBC, quite frankly," she said.

Executive Producer Rick Kaplan told the New York Daily News he plans to bring back a more traditional evening newscast with Couric as anchor.

"Katie brought a lot of new viewers," he said. "Now we need to bring some of the previous viewers back."

Kaplan said the show tried a lot of things when Couric was hired, and that they "probably tried too many things at once."

But if she had known the nightly news show would revert to its old format, Couric said, the job "would have been less appealing to me. It would have required a lot more thought."

CBS chief Leslie Moonves promised Couric that together they would shake up the show's formulaic format. But, so far, putting Couric's morning "Today" show touch on the nightly newscast has been a bust. Couric came under intense scrutiny from the moment her deal was announced: Some CBS staffers didn't think she was serious enough for the job. Even former anchor Dan Rather piled on, saying CBS was "dumbing down" and "tarting up" the broadcast.

She drew an enviable 13.5 million viewers at first, but that fell to 5.5 million by May _ and recently creeped back to a third-place 6.1 million. ABC, by contrast, draws 8 million viewers.

As execs tinkered with the failing show, they cut Couric's sitdown interviews, leaving her fighting for airtime on her own broadcast. Now, Couric conducts fewer interviews and dresses down to give her critics less fodder. Even her casual "Hi, everyone" opening was dropped for a more traditional "Hello."

But she said she remained optimistic about the future.

"I think that bugs people even more that I'm not a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown," she told the magazine. "It's probably disappointing to some people. Because in the arc of the story, that's what they want to see."

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