Katie at CBS

Some people love Katie Couric, some people can’t stand her.

In my opinion, she is a regular person with very good news sense, and a totally commercial personality. Most of all, she is a gamer. A gamer is a player who always shows up when the chips are down. Joe Montana was a gamer. Reggie Jackson was a gamer. Tony Gwynn was a gamer.

A gamer in television news who is also a totally commercial personality is worth her weight in gold. If Katie weighs 130 pounds, and gold is $650 an ounce, Katie in gold is worth $1,352,000, a month, which is just about what CBS is paying her to become anchor of the Evening News, which is just about right. CBS isn’t paying her all that money because some people love her. CBS just wants the Evening News to improve in the ratings, so advertisers will pay more, and CBS and National Amusements will make more money.

It’s always all about money. If the criterion is content, or meaning to the world, The Today Show essentially is insignificant. If the criterion is money, The Today Show is the most lucrative programming on television, and that’s what made Katie so valuable. We can just be grateful she’s also a gamer. I’ll bet there isn’t a newspaper publisher in the country who wouldn’t pay an arm and a leg (somewhere in the middle-upper five figures, in newspaper values) to have a Katie Couric clone covering City Hall.

The CBS Evening News will be different with Katie as anchor. At least it better be. Having Katie Couric read news is like having Greg Maddux pitch batting practice. She is going to be an interviewer as well as an anchor, and she will be reporting live a lot, both hard and soft news, even the very soft but compelling stories that Charles Kuralt used to find. I can’t see this new show being contained to a half-hour. I wonder if the CBS Evening News will be expanded to an hour and become a fusion of the old Evening News, the Jim Lehrer News Hour without the propriety, and “On the Road.”

CBS has to figure out a legitimate way to keep Katie’s totally commercial personality on the field. That is where her everyday value is. Being a gamer is great, but a gamer shows up only in the really great games, and there aren’t too many of those in the daily news, thank God. If CBS is going to get its bang for the buck, she is going to have to emerge, somehow, in the viewer’s mind as “America’s Evening News Sweetheart,” highly likeable, highly mobile, highly diversified, and highly respected. God help them if they advertise her that way, but that is the end effect of putting all her skills to use, as ways to maximize ratings, which is the only thing that matters.