Couric’s News Show Gives CBS Lowest Ratings Since 1987

You can now safely say that time is running out for Katie Couric as an enduring CBS evening newscast anchor.

She has more than 60 Minutes left (in fact that’s where some writers have suggested she will land). But it’s hard to imagine CBS keeping the situation intact with this news:

It surely wasn’t what CBS dreamed about when Katie Couric was hired: the “CBS Evening News” last week recorded its smallest audience since 1987, and probably many years before that.

It also didn’t help that the average of 6.05 million viewers came at the beginning of the important May ratings “sweeps.”

Meanwhile, ABC’s “World News” recorded its widest advantage in viewership over NBC’s “Nightly News” since the week Peter Jennings died in August 2005. The victory, ABC’s ninth in 13 weeks over NBC, adds to the sense that Charles Gibson is eclipsing Brian Williams as the nation’s favorite network news anchor.

“World News” averaged 8.1 million viewers last week (5.7 rating, 12 share). NBC’s “Nightly News” had 7.5 million viewers, its fourth-lowest figure since at least 1987 (5.3, 12), and CBS had a 4.3 rating and 9 share. The year 1987 is a benchmark because that’s when Nielsen began using its “people meter” technology.

In a sense, Couric’s whopping salary and all the hype doomed her from the start. Once the press coverage about ratings not staying up takes hold, the conventional wisdom sets in. But in this case, the other problems were that the format has not lent itself to the kinds of skills that made Couric a hit in the first place.

NOTE: Couric has taken lot of unfair criticism for not being able to do a hard-news interview. She can and she did many times on NBC’s Today. But she did not become a big TV ratings draw because of doing intros to news reports. Yet, by trying to open up the CBS newcast format to take advantage of her skills (and also making certain assumptions about what younger viewers who are increasingly ignoring network newscasts would like to see) CBS was short-circuiting many of the reasons why some viewers tune to the evening newscast — those that are still tuning in, that is…those that haven’t caught the news already on cable, news radio, talk radio (or news weblog sites such as this).

PREDICTION: CBS can’t let this continue so sometime within the next two years Couric will move to another assignment on CBS. And it may be one that takes advantage of — and benefits from — her considerable, real journalistic and TV personality talents.