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Katie Couric can't catch a break.
So say three female media experts about the "CBS Evening News" anchor, who's been under the public microscope since her Sept. 5 debut.
With CBS mired in its usual third place in the weekly Nielsen derby, some critics say viewers aren't ready for a solo female anchor.
Adding fuel to their fire: In the November ratings sweeps, the $15 million-a-year Couric averaged almost 170,000 fewer viewers per night than did her less expensive "interim" predecessor, Bob Schieffer.
Despite the numbers, it's way too early to judge Couric, says Connie Chung, whose disastrous forced anchorship with Dan Rather lasted only two years, until 1995.
"All this takes an enormous amount of time," Chung says. "TV viewing rarely changes dramatically, whereas programmers do. I think Katie's holding her own nicely.
"I just wish everyone would stop analyzing her. It's not quite fair to constantly pass judgment on her and the `Evening News.' She's a pioneer in this arena, so it's the nature of the beast today."
To longtime journalist Geneva Overholser, Couric's only sin is being in the right place at the wrong time.
"A great woman finally got in there and broke the boys' club apart, but she did it at the worst possible time," when viewership for all Big 3 evening newcasts is plummeting, says Overholser, a professor at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism.
It's unfair to expect Couric to boost ratings simply because she's the first woman to solo- anchor a weeknight network newscast, Overholser says.
"It's a little bit like saying, `We have a couple of women presidents in nations now, but still we don't have peace.' We have all these great expectations that haven't been achieved."
The bar is unreasonably high for any alpha female breaking into a field, says Marie C. Wilson, founder and president of the White House Project, a nonpartisan organization that aims to advance women's leadership in all sectors.
"The first women always have to be 2 1/2 times better than a man. ... We have so few women in these positions, when we get somebody in there, she has to be perfect. The pressure is enormous."
With all the hype, viewers expected Couric's "Evening News" to be "a combination of Amazing Race,'American Idol,' and `Meet the Press,'" Wilson adds.
In Overholser's view, Couric is bearing up well. "As a public person, she has a lot of class."
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Brian Williams' "NBC Nightly News" won last week's Nielsens, but not by much.
"Nightly" averaged 9.1 million total viewers, only 120,000 ahead of Charlie Gibson's ABC "World News Tonight." Moreover, ABC outdrew NBC by 20,000 viewers in the 25-54-year-old news demographic that advertisers target, with 2.92 million.
Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News" had 7.5 million total viewers, including 2.26 million in the 25-54 group.
NBC got a boost Dec. 4, when "Nightly" had a single sponsor (and fewer commercials) for the first time in the broadcast's 37-year history. It notched 10.4 million viewers - 15 percent more than ABC and 30 percent ahead of CBS, according to NBC.
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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
