The End Of An Era At CBS? Again?
Posted on February 3, 2010 - Filed Under Blog
The NY Observer is reporting on “D-Day at CBS News.” Long-time staffers and stalwarts like Larry Doyle are being let go.
“But as the names of the laid-off began to circulate, it looked less like the end of days and more like the end of an era. The final vestiges of the pre–Katie Couric regime were finally leaving the network” -NY Observer
I’m sorry, but I never worked for CBS and I have no idea who Larry Doyle is. Although I’m sure he’s a great guy and a hard worker and his loss will be a real blow to the network.
I’m not sure how many times the media can keep reporting on “the end of an era” at CBS. The news division at what was once called the “Tiffany Network” has been dying the death of a thousand cuts ever since Walter Cronkite exited the building. And now we are left with the “pre-Katie Couric regime?” Another era? You have to wonder how long this will last and whether anybody continues to care.
Unless the bosses at the networks come up with some way for their product to be more relevant (and from what they’ve done thus far, it appears they can’t), then it’s essentially over for the television network news of old.
We go online at seven or eight in the morning and get the headlines. More than ten hours later Couric and her colleagues come along with mostly the same stories, but with little or no new information to distinguish the tv news product from the more complete coverage we’ve been reading on the web and watching on cable or satellite all day.
Barring some radical thinking, including a willingness on the part of the networks to pump more money into their news divisions as opposed to simply finding new ways to pull it out, we are witnessing the end of much more than just one more “era” at CBS.
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Just got a call from my wife on her way to work in downtown Los Angeles. “I wonder what’s going on at the courthouse” she said, “I haven’t seen that many satellite trucks in one place in a long, long time.” I told her I wasn’t sure, but that it’s probably a hearing for Michael Jackson’s doctor. Guess I’ll flip on CNN or MSNBC for an update. Or, I could wait ten hours and get an abbreviated report from Katie Couric on CBS.
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