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Jeff Moravec: Evening news no longer relevant to most Americans

By Jeff Moravec | 04/29/11

Katie Couric is leaving the CBS Evening News. Does anyone really care?

I grew up with the titans of evening new anchors, most notably Walter Cronkite... but Dan Rather was pretty good in his early days as well (although we remember him mostly now for the strange habits he developed). In my house, and most others in the U.S., everything stopped at 5:30 p.m.

Not these days. I can't even tell you when I last watched the evening news. (I even had to look to see who the anchors are at the three big networks.) Besides the fact that the network news shows have become soft and lifestyle-oriented, there are just too many better choices to get the latest news... choices where you don't have to sit through commercial after commercial for pharmaceuticals.


And obviously I'm not alone.  In the first quarter of 2011, "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" had the show's lowest ratings since 1992 — which is as far back as Nielsen's records go. The program averaged only 6.4 million viewers, and fewer than 2 million aged 25-54. Lady Gaga probably has more followers on Twitter than that.

It's simple. The network evening news is simply no longer meaningful for the majority of Americans.

This post was written by Jeff Moravec and originally published on his blog. Follow Jeff on Twitter: @moraveccomm

Comments (3)

Submitted by Erik Hare on April 29, 2011 - 8:17am.

I've been thinking about this a lot as well. It makes me wonder where we get our news from, to the extent we get it at all. It probably comes form a diverse basket of sources that starts with internet aggregators like Yahoo and so on, branching out through raw gossip as much as anything.

One source for everyone's news is dangerous, but it does have the advantage of starting a nationwide dialogue on the topics presented. I fear we have almost nothing to talk about, at least of substance.

Some of my own posts on this topic recently:
http://erikhare.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/whats-up/
http://erikhare.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/infotainment/

Submitted by John Reinan on April 29, 2011 - 9:50am.

I agree, Jeff. I think a lot of Americans aren't even home in time to watch the network news anymore, although the factors you cited are bigger contributors to the decline. I think the local news broadcasts are still more relevant to a lot of viewers, but obviously they've slipped a lot, too.

Submitted by Laura Gilbert on April 29, 2011 - 1:53pm.

I agree. I haven't watched the nightly news on a regular basis for years. Before the internet the nightly news was as close as we got to fast-breaking news. Love the Lady Gaga comment. So true.