Thursday, April 10, 2008

The $15 Million Bust


After paying this woman $15 million per year to get to the bottom of the rankings, CBS is (rumor) going to cut its' losses.
After two years of record-low ratings, both CBS News executives and people close to Katie Couric say that the "CBS Evening News" anchor is likely to leave the network well before her contract expires in 2011 -- possibly soon after the presidential inauguration early next year.
I could have gotten them to the bottom much cheaper. Heck I may not have even dropped them quite as far.
Ms. Couric isn't even halfway through her five-year contract with CBS, which began in June 2006 and pays an annual salary of around $15 million. But CBS executives are under pressure to cut costs and improve ratings for the broadcast, which trails rival newscasts on ABC and NBC by wide margins.

Her departure would cap a difficult episode for CBS, which brought Ms. Couric to the network with considerable fanfare in a bid to catapult "Evening News" back into first place. Excluding several weeks of her tenure, Ms. Couric never bested the ratings of interim anchor Bob Schieffer, who was named to host the broadcast temporarily after "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather left the newscast in the wake of a discredited report on George W. Bush's National Guard service.
'Discredited report', gotta love that terminology. More like 'bald-faced' lie. But what can you expect from a network that pays this much money to lag behind everyone else.
WSJ

4 comments:

James Shott said...

Well, she does have nice legs!

Lord Nazh said...

That was an old pic :)

but yes, she does

James Higham said...

Similar sort of thing happened with K Mart.

In football, we call it "catch up football".

It's doomed.

Ruthie said...

CBS has since denied this story-- rep says they don't plan to replace her.

Hmm.. I think it's the evening news that's on its way out. That and newspapers.

Doesn't bode well for people like me who work for newspapers...

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