Asked if he knew why ABC was up and NBC was down, Mr. Gibson said: “I don’t have any answer.”To me, the answer to why Gibson's newscast has shot up to number one since January is far simpler than the anchor's answer suggests. It's this: Evening newscasts are, in some ways, dinosaurs, favored by the over-60 crowd. Those in other age categories aren't tied to these traditional news venues. They're going to the Internet, cable news channels, and even late night talk shows for their news and information. In the era of the twenty-four-hour news cycle and long commutes to the suburbs, younger people just aren't as acculturated to the evening newscasts as most were in the era of Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley.
Pressed to offer some theories, he ticked off several possible reasons. The most important, he said, was “stability.” Specifically he was referring to how he had sought to calm the program’s employees after a turbulent year. Mr. Jennings’s death was followed by the departures of his designated successors (Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas) last year after Mr. Woodruff suffered injuries in Iraq, and Ms. Vargas then decided to step down because of her pregnancy.
He also suggested that the program had “caught some breaks” in recent months, including Brian Ross’s early reporting on the Congressional page scandal that would claim the career of Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican. ABC News also received an extra half-hour in prime time on the night of the midterm elections in November. And finally there was the return of Mr. Woodruff, who reported not only on his recovery but on the treatment of wounded veterans.
But older viewers of these newscasts quite naturally gravitate to older anchors. That's why after the often shrill and irresponsible Dan Rather left the CBS Evening News, older viewers were attracted to his interim replacement, Bob Schieffer, a solid presence they'd known for years.
When Katie Couric, deliberately chosen by CBS execs for her appeal to a younger demographic, took over the news at the "Tiffany Network," evening news traditionalists, not wed to Brian Williams in spite of GE/NBC's typically careful succession planning, cast about for a different anchor to watch.
When Gibson talks about "stability" as an explanation for his evening newscast's ascendancy then, I think he's right. But not for the reason he cites. The stability of the production's staff is probably irrelevant to the upward sweep of ABC's evening news ratings. Instead, it's the stability that older viewers feel when seeing the face of a newscaster they've known for decades.
Me, I'm in a completely different demographic, I guess. After years of watching half of The NewsHour on PBS and switching over to Tom Brokaw, I've taken to watching the PBS offering for its full sixty minutes.
[THANKS TO: Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for linking to this post.]
7 comments:
You could be right, but I think Gibson stands out for another reason -- balance. He plays the news straight. He doesn't use his position as a pulpit like Rather did, and Jennings to a lesser extent. He is remarkably centrist in his pitch and seems to have a commitment to tell all sides of a story.
Charlie:
That may be true. But I think that Williams achieves a similar even-handedness, all the while losing viewers.
Mark
Both Williams and Couric look to perfect, too manufactured. In Williams I can't get past his tan. I know it's shallow as all hell of me, but the dark tan and bright white glowing eyes give me the creeps. With Couric its the Stepford Wives vibe.
I like Gibson, but when I have a chance to watch network news (rare) I prefer Britt Hume.
I don't watch evening network news. If his ratings have gone up, is it because the others are so awful that their ratings have gone down? Or is he pulling in new evening viewers?
I would be more curious about his ratings if he was expanding evening viewership rather than it being pushed around from network to network.
I will second what Charlie said at the crack of dawn this morning. Gibson's voice and demeanor both convey a balanced approach. Even the reports themselves seem more balanced than what I'm used to from evening news...or maybe I'm just getting old (I'm 53)! Still, I hardly ever watch, being too busy like the people Mark Daniels is describing, and preferring other outlets like Brit Humes Special Edition and the radio.
I think that Gibson does better because he appears to be scolding rather than outraged. I like Williams well enough (though I get my news almost exclusively via internet). But I think that the scold has more gravitas than the outraged person, who, even if appearing politically balanced, seems less in control.
It's been years since I regularly watched network evening news. But if I did, I would watch Charles Gibson. I instinctively trust him to be fair-minded, and he seems to be a decent guy.
Brian Williams comes across as a bit smarmy, like a used car dealer. And in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, he uttered some on-air comments that I found to be arrogant and condescending toward the residents of New Orleans.
Katie Couric is just too narcissistic for my taste.
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