Why Katie Why

Is anyone else throughly perplexed by Katie Couric's move to the evening news? I know I'm a few days late on this one, but I was hoping it would somehow be explained in a rational manner. Anyhoot, I get the "I want to be the first woman _______". Although it's hard to think of someone making $LOTS million as being part of a disadvantaged/minority group, technically Ms. Couric does fit the bill so it is a bit groundbreaking. And I'm sure Katie has had this dream of being the next Walter Cronkite since she was just a wee-little Katie, but here's the catch: Nobody watches the evening news any longer. That went out with big shoulder pads and leg warmers in the 80s. Both Katie and CBS are missing the big question: Why doesn't anybody watch the evening news? Or maybe they're just getting the answer wrong. It's not because the evening news is filled with a bunch of stoggy old men.

The evening news simply doesn't fit our lifestyle anymore. There are about 27 reasons why, but I'm going to stick with 3.

1. We're not done with our day by 6pm. Not even close. Yes, I would love to see Katie's first evening news show, but I'm trying right now to figure out when it is so I can make an extra effort to be at home for that time. Most evenings I'm lucky if I can make it home by 8. But, I'm not the target market. Even still the working parents of the world aren't making it home by 6pm, or if they are it's closer to 6:15 and they're dealing with attention-deprived and hungry kids and barking dogs. Even the picture perfect 1950's familys where mom stays at home and makes sure warm cookies await the kids after school aren't around at 6pm. Kids finish soccer practice around 5:30 so mom is somewhere stuck in traffic in the minivan while Katie recounts the top news story. It didn't used to be this way. After-school activities used to end at 4 or 4:30. But as more and more people, men and women, mothers and fathers, find themselves working until at least 5:30 every night, our days got later.
2. We have a lot more options for TV. Granted, 6pm isn't prime tv hour (for a reason!!! see point #1), but still, the average family with cable has some 80 other channels to choose from. They can watch cartoons, reality tv, entertainment gossip, soap operas, sitcoms, paris hilton's latest gig, etc. And overwhelmingly, Americans are choosing the "other" categories as opposed to news stories. Just look at the Today Show, Katie's current wahoo. For a morning news show, how little of it actually talks about traditional CBS Evening News -style news? I think Ann Curry*might* get 3 minutes to run down the day's headlines 3 times in the whole show. The rest of the Today Show is 5 minute segments on the latest diets, the newest toys, and the most recent celebrity gossip. All topics which have a full 30 minutes dedicated to them at the 6pm hour.
3. By 6pm, we already know the news of the day. If we didn't catch it on the morning news, we read about it in the newspaper on the internet or heard about it through daily chatter. Sure, maybe we missed a small story or two (okay, they're the major stories of the day like the ones about immigrant worker rights or port deals with arab nations), but we've heard about the stuff we really care about (TomKat getting married sometime in the summer, Jessica Simpson looking to adopt). The only reason morning news is still popular is because there are 4-8 hours in which we aren't plugged into the internet for the latest going-ons around the world hollywood, so we tune in to see what we missed. Unless an event happens at 5:46, by 6pm it's old news.

Anyhoot, I wish Katie luck. And as I said, I'll do my best to watch her first show. But I just can't see how this was a smart idea. Stay tuned.