Couric is a Bad Choice for Anchor

Katie Couric made a career ending move by accepting the offer to anchor CBS Evening News. She is not AnchorPerson material. Her hardest news coverage to date seems to be the annual Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade.

So after Kronkite and Rather, Couric will now take the reigns of CBS Evening News and finally drill that news division into the cellar of the ratings among the three major news networks. Katie will likely leave the new post at CBS with dismal ratings and an excuse that she wishes to “focus on family” or something similar.

If CBS wanted a woman, there are many more qualified women television anchors out there. Women that aren’t known to be “perky and bubbly.” Women that will lend a seriousness to the news.

If CBS wanted someone young and cute, they could have definitely done much better than Katie, who has “hit the wall” at full speed. No one wants to see an anchor lady age on the nightly news. Am I being mean? Maybe just a tad, but I have my crystal ball out and I’m peering into the future. This is what I see-

• Couric will be out of the anchor chair after dismal ratings.
• Les Moonves, who pushed for the move for Couric, will face difficulty in his position at CBS, and will ultimately admit that it was a mistake to put Couric in the Anchor Chair.
• 60 Minutes, which Katie will now likely work on as well, will lose further credibility after the faked story debacle in 2004 about Bush’s National Guard service.

Katie will be retired from the news biz, and the whole move to the anchor chair will sadly be viewed as an “experiment.” Don’t get me wrong. Its definitely time that a woman was a major news anchor. And a woman can do the job very well, if not better than any man. But is Katie Couric that brave pioneer for equality in the male-dominated evening news biz?

She most certainly is not.