The most successful car makers sell the most cars. Many years ago Ford produced a famous bomb call the Edsel. People blamed Ford for the failure, not the car buying public.
Hewlett Packard overtook Dell in computers; now Dell is fighting back. They didn’t blame fickle computer buyers, they are looking to improve their products and services.
Wal-Mart is the largest retailer because more people shop there than any other store. If people stopped going to Wal-Mart it would be rational to ask what Wal-Mart is doing wrong, not what was wrong with shoppers.
But at CBS, its failure to deliver a product that people prefer over the competition is the fault of … wait for it … the audience.
This really is the opinion of Linda Mason, News Senior Vice President at CBS as she explains the reason for Katie Couric’s dismal ratings as the CBS Evening News anchor.
Brian Montopoli: You told me, a little while back, that you were "the first woman at every job I had at CBS News." And that includes in 1971, when you were the first female field producer for The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite. I'm curious your take on Katie Couric's experience as the first solo female nightly news anchor.I have not watched the alphabet news shows for many years so I can’t say that I tuned out of CBS because of perky Katie. But apparently a lot of people have done just that. Linda Mason’s denigration of her customers got a heated reaction. Here are a number of comments that followed a link to the interview by Matt Drudge:
Linda Mason: I'm just surprised at how, almost 30 years after I worked on the "Evening News" as the first woman producer, that Katie is having such a tough time being accepted by the public, which seems to prefer the news from white guys, and now that Charlie's doing so well, from older white guys. I guess they want the reassurance of a Walter Cronkite.
I'm not sure how Linda Mason, News Senior Vice President, Standards and Special Projects, can solve her problem of an audience that just sucks. And is stupid.
I find it interesting that CBS News blames the audience for its apparent lack of performance. That may be why the big three television news networks are not doing all that well these days--if the audience isn't in tune with them, then there MUST be something wrong with the audience. After all, the people that run the three network news organizations are smarter than the rest of us.
People don't like our product? Then blame the customer! Brilliant. And then suggest that anyone who patronizes our competition is a racist, sexist misanthrope. It couldn't possibly be that your anchor is a vapid partisan who'se the personification of the Peter Principle.
Katie Couric and Linda Mason are what happens when you spend the better part of a generation preoccupied wringing your hands over "diversity": race, gender and sexual preference. This is what absolutely dominates most college campuses, and it is so infused in journalism schools that they don't even realize their own bias.
Linda Mason's throwaway comment about viewers preferring their news from 'white guys' illustrates the distance between MSM people and news consumers. For starters, 'white guys' is urban liberal talk. Most of the people in the United States, and most news consumers are, uh, 'white', there, Linda. News consumers are disproportionately male. So using the term 'white guys' in this context is a little like using the term 'females' when talking about elementary education. Chattering-class people seem much more likely to be preoccupied with race and gender than ordinary people. The trouble starts when they project their obsessions onto the mass public, and try to stuff reality into this narrow framework.
What is absolutely mind boggling is that a highly placed executive with a major network blames declining sales on her customers rather than on the product she is producing. I guess in the TV business, it is all about ME.
1 comment:
I stopped watching perky Katie long ago on the Today Show. I really could not take her self righteous, rude, know it all attitude, much like Bryant Gumbal when he graced the show. Bryant of not enough Afro-Americans at the Winter Olympics fame.
I am not an expert at Katie reading the news because I have never watched more than a minute here and there, but whenever I do catch a glimpse of her she looks distressed, uncomfortable, and totally humorless. I wish no one ill, especially such high profile ill, but apparently a bad career move for the perky one.
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