Outside Voices: Ankush Khardori On The Good Thing About Bad Ratings
There was a time before "CSI" -- hard to recall, I realize, but try hard. In the 1990s, CBS's primetime lineup was in the lurch: Notable offerings included the inexplicable prairie throwback, "Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman," and the delightfully crazy "Diagnosis Murder." CBS seemed to revel in its reputation as the "geezer network," and things were not looking up when Les Moonves came to the network in 1995. It was then -- with CBS's ratings in the dumps and, it seemed, nothing to lose -- that the network began to move out of its comfort zone. In 2000, "Survivor" arrived out of nowhere and changed network TV as we know it. Later that year, "CSI" brought the crime procedural into the twenty-first century, and today it seems that every other show is either a spin-off or transparently (if successfully) mimicking its style. Neither of these successes was predicted.
There is a lesson in the recent history of CBS Primetime for CBS News: Failures -- stretches of failures, even -- have significant upsides. When networks (or divisions) are on top, they stagnate (think "CSI," " CSI:Miami," and "CSI:NY"), and viewers inevitably lose interest when the old, good thing dies (think "Must See TV") or something new comes along. As with CBS primetime in 2000, that something new frequently comes from a competitor that is at the back of the pack but has shown the will to experiment -- to take risks, to shake things up, to throw things against the wall and see what sticks. Desperation, oddly, is very often the best catalyst for innovation.
Today CBS News, whether willing to admit it or not, finds itself in a very similar spot of embarrassment and opportunity, though things aren't quite as bad as they could be. The "CBS Evening News" is in last place (though with higher ratings than last year). "The Early Show" similarly finds itself lagging behind its competitors. (Note to the execs: That spike in the ratings this week was me watching.) On the other hand, you have Sunday morning's "Face the Nation" (which comes in behind NBC's juggernaut "Meet the Press" but holds its own against its other competitors) and the unstoppable "60 Minutes" -- though, importantly, both are only weekly shows.
Yet despite its somewhat precarious position, CBS News seems unwilling to break any mold.
Take the "Evening News." The arrival of Katie Couric was, to be sure, a game-changer, but early twists on the newscast were duds (for instance, the strangely capitalized "freeSpeech" segment), and, since last fall, the program has become harder to distinguish from its rivals. Like its competitors, the "Evening News" is two newscasts in one -- the first a hurried rundown of some of the day's major events, the second driven by one or two stories of the softer "human interest" or "news you can use" variety. The Couric "Evening News" features relatively more interviews with public figures and occasional post-story banter with reporters, but the nightly news template has by and large been unchanged.
Within the standard constraints, I happen to prefer Couric to her competitors. She has become self-assured, capable of dead seriousness when necessary, and (mostly) willing to ask tough questions of her interviewees. Her trademark "nice"ness is even occasionally used to entertaining, incisive effect: When Hillary Clinton argued this week that her experience with health care reform qualified her for the presidency, Couric observed, with a smile, "In fact, Senator, some might say that was a disaster."
Even so, when I think about what I want in the news, the standard nightly newscast -- superficial, hurried, devoid of context -- is not it. (For what it's worth, I'm at the bottom of the vaunted 25-54 demo.) Paul Friedman, the executive in charge of the newscast, recently told The New York Observer that it has been "stunning ... to discover how resistant people are to change" and that "we seriously underestimated -- as in, we were mistaken -- about how different the audience wants you to be at 6:30. The answer, as it turns out, is 'Not that different.'" These comments miss two points: First, the initial flailing of CBS's newscast demonstrates less that people are resistant to change than that, in the case of segments like "freeSpeech ," they are capable of distinguishing good ideas from bad. Second, "the audience" is shrinking across all three nightly newscasts; in order to see a net gain, particularly drawn from younger viewers, CBS may need to deal with losing some of its current viewers.
Importantly, the nightly news race is still in its beginning stages. The dust from the end of the Jennings-Brokaw-Rather era has not yet settled, which gives CBS an opportunity to experiment before young and middle-aged viewers settle in with Brian Williams or Charles Gibson. With 19 actual minutes for news, I realize that even ostensibly small changes can actually be quite significant, so here are just a few suggestions of my own for tweaking the show, but by all means, surprise me:
Other CBS News shows have demonstrated a similar lack of imagination. "The Early Show" is, I must say, painful to watch. All of the morning shows are fluff, of course, but that doesn't make it acceptable, and that doesn't mean a radical change to the genre is impossible. CBS News's own poll this week reported that Iraq is, by far, the most important issue to Americans right now. Give it coverage -- even in the morning -- commensurate to that importance. Skip some of the segments on expensive children's birthday parties, the newest edition of The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy, planning a Super Bowl party, and cheap wedding dresses (all actual stories this week, incidentally) and devote more time to the ultimate human interest stories of our day -- the war, the economy, health care, education, and so on. (A well-executed segment on the "Evening News" this week about the relatively high number of soldiers from Paris, Illinois, who have been killed in Iraq could have easily been a morning story.) We live in increasingly anxious times, but you wouldn't know it from the pablum in which all of the morning shows traffic. Granted, the conventional wisdom on the shows suggests such a gamble might not pay off, but again, the ratings suggest that "The Early Show" doesn't have much to lose.
About Schieffer's Sunday show, I'll just say this: It's capably done but inexplicably only 30 minutes long. Why?
CBS News has an unwanted luxury with some programs -- room to maneuver -- that other networks don't. Start throwing things against the wall. You never know what'll stick.