The MagazineKatie in KabulJoseph Epstein, last of the news-watchersMay 30, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 35
• By JOSEPH EPSTEIN
 By the time you read this, Katie Couric will no longer be the anchorwoman on the CBS Evening News. She could not do what she was paid $15 million a year to do: bring up the ratings for CBS prime-time news and with them its advertising revenues. Both fell further during her tenure. While advertising revenues are down 9.1 percent for prime-time news shows generally, CBS’s revenues fell, according to the Wall Street Journal, a full 23 percent.  David Clark I have been among Katie Couric’s dwindling audience, and, in perhaps a slightly perverse way, I shall miss her. Prime-time news in Chicago goes on at 5:30 p.m., which is drink time chez Epstein: specifically, time for a glass of cold Riesling and a handful of Paul Newman pretzels, which, as the spoonful of sugar did to the medicine, helps the news go down. My demographic cohort, to use the charming advertising phrase, is the chief audience for prime-time news, or so I judge from all the Viagra, Plavix, Boniva, and other older players’ medicines, palliatives, and panaceas hawked on all three news shows. I have a dim memory of a stern gent named John Cameron Swayze (great portentous name) doing prime-time news. I recall Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalism’s Mother Teresa, demeaning himself on a show called Person to Person, in which one night I heard him ask, “Fidel, is that a baseball bat in the corner there?” “That’s right,” the genial dictator replied, “love de game of baseball, Ed.” I remember Huntley and Brinkley, and enjoyed Brinkley’s subtle hints that politicians were not to be taken entirely seriously. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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