CBS President, Mangina Moonves

CBS blames sexism for bad ratings

By Joshua Chaffin in New York

Published: June 12 2007 22:27 | Last updated: June 12 2007 22:27

Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, on Tuesday suggested that sexist attitudes were partly to blame for the faltering performance of Katie Couric, the news anchor he recruited to the network with a $15m annual pay package.

“I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling,” Mr Moonves said of the audience’s reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low.

Sorry Leslie, but you just don't get it. The number of people who don't want news from THIS woman is NOT startling. If you weren't the leftist, liberal, feminized tool typical of most of the network news types, you would have understood that Mz. Couric was going to be a disaster as a news anchor.

NRO Columnist, Myrna Blyth, explains it perfectly...

They promised something more interesting than a news format that has been losing viewers for years, and then they didn’t deliver. They promoted Katie as a different kind of anchor as well. In truth, she is different only because she is not nearly as capable as the scores of women broadcasters who competently anchor or co-anchor the local news twice a night all over the country. And who audiences find acceptable.

On Today, Katie was one part perkiness, one part snarkiness, overlayed with occasional forays into gushiness — especially whenever Hillary was on the set. She started out marketing herself to the women of America as your typical “soccer mom.” And that worked for quite a while. But as the years went by and she became more and more glamorous, showing off her trainer-buffed body and swinging her dangling earrings, her toned legs, and Jimmy Choos, at the camera. As her salary and celebrity status grew, she lost a lot of her appeal to the women who had been her fans. By the end of her Today stint, her Q ratings were even lower than, yes, Dan Rather’s! One wonder why CBS, as they handed her buckets of money, never even noticed.

See, 'cause CBS thought they were being cutting edge...that they were pioneering some kind of magical liberal PC breakthrough. Why, it was the FIRST female news anchor on prime time network news!