The Katie Couric Disaster

A year and a half ago, she was CBS's big ticket to revive the dying Evening News format.

Now, she's a $75 million thorn in their side.

Katie Couric made his history September 2006 when she became the first woman anchor of the CBS Evening News, leaving behind her home of over a decade on The Today Show. Despite promising first day ratings, the audience quickly left in droves, which left the CBS Evening News dead last in the battle with ABC and NBC.

CBS believed that the perky morning co-host would make a fantastic, or at least adequate, news anchor. Obviously, they never watched Today. Katie Couric's strength, and which made her "America's Sweetheart", was connecting with the people, all kinds of people. Whether it was outside of Rockefeller Center with the masses, or interviewing celebrities and public figures, she was able to reach the public on a meaningful level. It is pretty hard to do that behind a desk in a stuffy studio reporting hard-hitting news that many viewers tend to avoid anyway. The 13 million viewers who watched her first night were expecting the perky Katie from the Today couch. What they got a standoffish news anchor. They quickly changed the channel.

You would think that CBS would be careful of making mistakes after the Dan Rather fiasco, but lo and behold, they pretty much shot themselves in the foot. Instead of bleeding red, they are bleeding green, to the tune of $15 million a year.

Now, CBS wasn't wrong for hiring Katie completely, they just ignored her strengths and plopped her in the anchor chair. She should've been placed in a program where her interviewing expertise and her connection to the public could have been put to good use. If there wasn't one, make one up! They are spending 75 million bucks, for heaven's sake. If anything, she would have been a great host for 60 Minutes.

If CBS actually examined what they were spending so much money on, they would have never placed her on the CBS Evening News. If they had done their research, CBS would have gotten their money's worth and Katie would have still reached her goal of anchoring her own program. Instead, both parties come off looking incredibly and embarrassingly foolish. Katie, for being in over her head, and CBS for, once again, not getting their facts straight.