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April 05, 2005
No Way, Bob
Jacques Steinberg wrote in a story by on page B1 of the The New York Times on Monday, April 4, titled “At CBS News, Some Temporary Changes May Stick,” that CBS chairman Les Moonves said that he never expected Bob Schieffer, who took over for Dan Rather on the “CBS Evening News,” to “move so quickly to address what Moonves perceived to be some of the broadcast’s most glaring shortcomings.” Steinberg went on to indicate that Schieffer was angling to stay past his three-months temporary assignment, perhaps to hang on until he is 70 in two years.
Forget it, Bob, the changes won’t stick. Moonves is under the gun to lift the ratings of the “CBS Evening News” time period, because if the program can’t be competitive, which it isn’t now, the entire fate of the CBS News division might well be at stake.
Larry Kramer, the smart entrepreneur and founder of MarketWatch, this week was named president of CBS Digital Media. Kramer “will have oversight of all online operations and business development for CBS and UPN,” according to TelevisionWeek. Kramer will report to Mooonves. Kramer will be aggressively pushing for news to go online, which means that CBS News could migrate to primarily an online medium; that way CBS could cancel the “CBS Evening News” and turn the time period back to affiliates, which could make a lot more money with syndicated programming.
Also, if CBS cancelled the evening news, if could close its few remaining bureaus and terminate a lot of correspondents. The only programs that CBS News would produce would the two editions of “60 Minutes,” “48 Hours,” and “The Early Show,” which don’t necessarily require news bureaus and scores of correspondents. The appeal of saving money and getting higher ratings will prove to be too tempting for Moonves to resist. That's how I see it.
Posted by Charles Warner at April 5, 2005 12:02 PM
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Comments
Jesse Kornbluth at April 8, 2005 10:58 AM writes:
Riveting.
Some questions:
l) If CBS does this, do viewers migrate to NBC or ABC, or to cable news, or, all day long, to the Web?
2) If CBS has success with this, will NBC and ABC follow?
3) If CBS does this, will it adjust "news standards" to the more relaxed standards of the Internet?
4) Roger Ailes has praised Schieffer. Was that...disingenuous?
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