Vapid Bubblehead Doesn’t Raise Ratings. Surprise, Surprise.

The ratings picture is getting worse for CBS’ “Evening News With Katie Couric.”

Last week, the network’s flagship newscast drew its smallest audience since 1987, according to Nielsen Media Research.

ABC’s “World News With Charles Gibson,” on the other hand, recorded its fifth straight week as the most-watched evening newscast on the air.

The weekly win comes just as Gibson is marking his first year as the sole anchor of ABC’s news.

Last week, “World News” averaged 7.78 million viewers.

NBC’s “Nightly News With Brian Williams,” once the dominant evening newscast, was second, with 7.19 million viewers. CBS’ “Evening News” averaged 5.96 million viewers.

“World News” has been No. 1 12 times in the past 16 weeks, according to Nielsen.

Based on an analysis of the ratings for the 2006-2007 season, the period in which Couric has been the face of CBS News, the “Evening News” has lost ground compared with the year before. Most of the decline has come among men aged 25 to 54 (off 11%) and adults older than 55 (10%).

So personality-driven news doesn’t work either…

You have to wonder what idiot in the head offices of CBS (and God knows there are plenty of ‘em) thought that hiring a glorified feature reporter as a news reader would actually raise ratings. There is a certain portion of people in this country who turns on their news to get news by someone who does more than read off a teleprompter.

Say what you want about Bob Schieffer, but he was the prototypical evening news anchor. So are Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson. Katie Couric? Daytime host who’s shockingly out of her element and it shows both in her broadcast and in the response thereto.

Source: NY Daily News