Tart Me Up, Dumb Me Down

Far be it for any blogger to defend Dan Rather - a man who still can't fully understand why everyone failed to buy into that document scandal about Bush and the National Guard - but doesn't he have a point? I realize everyone has their panties in a bunch over the use of the word "tart", since this somehow suggests that, you know, I guess ... since Couric is a lady she's stupider than Dan, or something. But clearly CBS decided to try a format change when she took over the news - does anyone remember the breathless coverage over Suri Cruise? - and it wasn't about making the news more gruff and serious-like.

Furthermore, CBS executives have been waving their arms trying to explain their failing results for the past nine months by suggesting that America must be sexist, because apparently Mrs. Couric (to repeat) is not a dude, and people have no interest in planting themselves before almighty network television between 6:30 and 7:00 to watch her, in particular, furrow her brow and tell us about the latest violence in Gaza and the usual health care microscandal.

At the risk of repeating, ad nauseam, what's brutally obvious to everyone in America but the executive suite at Viacom: The nightly news hour is an artifact of a certain time period in history, one which is gradually coming to a close. Do the rest of us a favor and buy yourself some statistics about the population and mortality rate of the baby boomer demographic. Hint: It's a line that slopes downward over the next thirty to forty years. That's all you have left for the nightly news, at most. And it's probably a damn sight shorter than that, based on the fact that even the late adopters I know in the 50 to 60 year-old set are surfing information sources all over the Internet these days.

Blame the customer. This flies laughably in the face of everything that has been learned in a network-based economy, where people have an almost silly amount of choices, and you can't swing a cat without knocking over ten MBAs jabbering about highly targeted markets, mass-customization, and making sure the consumer is delightfully over-served. But when you are still pushing a 20th century product in a 21st century economy, I guess your excuses for failure will sound outdated and shopworn too, right?

Update: I've heard some compelling arguments that this tempest in a teapot is merely (cynically) a calculated ploy on the part of Moonves and Kaplan to shake out a few more viewers for the CBS Evening News.

Tags: Dan Rather, Katie Couric, CBS