July 17, 2006 When Couric Broadcasts the News, Some Radio and Web Sites Will Too By DEBORAH STARR SEIBEL NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/business/media/17cbs.html?pagewanted=print PASADENA, Calif., July 16 When a network evening newscast passes the anchors baton, viewers have come to expect an overhauled set, music and graphics. But for Sept. 5, when Katie Couric takes over on The CBS Evening News, the network is planning more widespread changes, including fanning the newscast out across different media, including radio and the Web, to capture a wider audience. Taking questions from more than 200 television critics gathered here on Sunday for their semiannual meeting, Ms. Couric and Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, outlined some of what Mr. McManus calls expansive and in many ways unprecedented changes that will come when Ms. Couric takes over from Bob Schieffer and becomes the first female sole anchor of a major network newscast. The CBS Evening News is going to be showcased on the radio, said Mr. McManus, which is new and its different and I think will further expose our product to a lot of people. The multiplatform strategy will involve simulcasting the first segment of the evening news on CBS Radio News, which will be made available to its more than 500 affiliated stations around the country. Already committed to the simulcast are WCBS-AM in New York, WTOP radio in Washington and WBZ in Boston. The strategy will also include on-demand, extended Webcast interviews (done by Ms. Couric or CBS correspondents) and daily on-camera Web rundowns of the news lineup for the television broadcast that evening. Our goal on Sept. 5 is that whether youre in your car, on your computer, commuting, listening on your cell phone, or, God forbid, at home watching television, that the CBS news will be available to you, said Mr. McManus. Additionally, it was announced that CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer, who has not only stabilized the newscast but attracted some 300,000 new viewers, will be staying on as a contributing correspondent based in Washington. He may also be assigned a role as commentator, according to Mr. McManus. Ms. Couric appeared relaxed, in good spirits and ready to take on a crowd of eager reporters. Her meeting with the television critics came one day before the end of her six-city listening tour, a series of town hall meetings and cancer fund-raisers closed to the new media that were designed to ease her transition from NBC to CBS and to foster goodwill with important CBS affiliates such as Dallas, Denver, San Diego and San Francisco. I took the entire month of June off, said Ms. Couric. I found that sleep is very underrated and it was a great time for me to relax and spend quality time with my children. As for what she had heard this week from her viewers in the town hall meetings, Ms. Couric said, it reinforced, happily, the view that there are a lot of highly intelligent, very engaged people in this country who are very interested in serious subjects and the news of the day. What she learned, she said, is that people want longer news stories and they want to know how the stories are relevant to their lives. They also feel, she said, that the news is too depressing. Ms. Couric says that the her broadcasts will be a work in progress. We have a lot of work ahead. Im really excited to get started, to stop talking about this and to actually start doing the job. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
