MediaBuyerPlanner: Just days after a new producer for NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams was announced, CBS News has replaced Rome Hartman, the executive producer of the Evening News with Katie Couric.
Hartman will be succeeded by long-time TV news executive and producer Rick Kaplan, according to several people who were informed of the decision, reports The New York Times.
The decision follows what the Times refers to as “a run of disappointing ratings” for the newscast, which had high hopes for Katie Couric’s debut as the show’s anchor.
CBS’s newscast has sunk back to its usual third place slot after a brief surge in ratings last September. Until recently, the show was ahead of where it was at the same time last year, when Bob Schieffer was the anchor, but in recent weeks it has fallen short of those audience totals.
Last July, when Couric was planning to make her move to CBS, network news analyst Andrew Tyndall said her arrival at CBS might increase the amount of sampling that viewers did of rival networks, but that it was unlikely she would convert non-news viewers to the news in that time slot.
The news audience is most likely to grow most, he said, not based on who the anchor is but during periods of heavy news events such as wars, disasters, elections, and so on.
Related stories:
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- Katie Couric’s News Debut Averages 9.1 Rating
- Nightly News Programs Likely to Settle Down
- Gibson to Anchor ABC’s ‘World News Tonight’
- Couric’s Move: Not Enough to Save Evening News
