Katie Couric and Glenn Beck: Moving On

Image by Image Editor via FlickrThe word "footsteps" comes to mind when it comes to the fortunes of two media personalities.  Katie Couric wants to go down the path of Oprah Winfrey instead of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.  Glenn Beck just wants to march to his own drummer.

Katie Couric is apparently leaving the "CBS Evening News" when her contract is up in June, though it hasn't been officially announced.  It is widely believed that she will be hosting a syndicated talk show starting in 2012.

When Couric arrived from NBC's "Today" in 2006 to become the first solo female network evening news anchor, she tried to think out of the box.  More interviews, commentaries and soft features along with the news of the day were tried at the beginning.  But that didn't work, so CBS went back to a more traditional newscast, one that's been in place since the days of Cronkite and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.  It wasn't a bad newscast, either, having won awards for broadcast excellence.  Still, the network news pecking order during Couric's tenure read:  NBC, ABC and CBS.  She inherited a third-place newscast and kept it there.

Couric is a lot better at interviewing than she is at anchoring.  The best remembered example is the one she did with Sarah Palin during the 2008 campaign.  Couric made the then-vice presidential candidate look like a fool who didn't know what was going on.  Maybe she's better suited for a talk show gig, where she can remind viewers to get colon cancer screenings, just like Bob Barker used to end every episode of "The Price Is Right" telling us to spay and neuter our pets.

As for Glenn Beck, the conservative commentator became a cultural figure the moment he moved from what is now HLN to Fox News Channel, the top-rated cable news channel.  A huge audience--2.5 million viewers at its peak--tuned in to hear Beck's professorial-like rantings on the world as it is.

Then it got bizarre.  Beck's emotional gloom-and-doom pronouncements, which included calling President Barack Obama a racist, led to advertisers fleeing and ratings plummeting.  He became the Chicken Little of the right, scaring people with his talk of the end of the United States as we know it.

So Beck and Fox News have mutually decided to call it a day, with the end of his TV show to be determined.  But that doesn't mean Beck is going away.  He still has a radio show (with a dwindling number of stations) and a website to do once he leaves TV.

Fox News may have lost Beck, but they still have plenty of blowhards to go around.

UPDATE:  Couric has formally announced that she's leaving the "CBS Evening News" when her contract ends in June.  Her successor, according to USA Today, might be Scott Pelley, who is probably best known as a correspondent for "60 Minutes".  CBS News will make a decision soon.