Last Updated on February 6, 2022
At the end of the month, Katie Couric will leave NBC and her job as anchor of Today, a position she has held for fifteen years, to prepare for a new assignment: anchor of the CBS Evening News.
But CBS is already making progress before she sets foot in the door. The Hollywood Reporter (no direct link available) is reporting that for the first time in years, CBS is making a strong run for second place in the nightly network news race and is now within only 300,000 viewers behind second place ABC.
NBC averages about 8 million viewers, ABC averages 7.3 million and CBS is edging forward with 7 million, all for the week ending May 1st.
The most recent “Patrick’s Place Poll” asked you who you’d prefer to watch. The rankings seemed to come fairly close to reality, although the gap from .
NBC came in an unquestionable first, with 50% of respondents selecting Brian Williams’s nightly broadcast. ABC came in second with a total of 32% of the vote, but only 11% of voters prefer Elizabeth Vargas and her anchor du jour at the anchor desk. Another 7% would prefer Vargas alone, 7% would rather Diane Sawyer take over sole anchoring duties and another 7% think Charlie Gibson should be the sole presenter on that network.
Of CBS’s 18% of the vote, 14% are looking forward to seeing Katie do the news. Only 4% want Bob Schieffer to continue as anchor. (Schieffer will remain on the broadcast with commentary from time to time.)
It’s clear that Katie has an uphill battle on her hands, but if her network is already growing before arrives, that might take a little of the tremendous pressure off during her first weeks on the air.
Incidentally, the new poll asks you to select the online news sources you consider to be generally trustworthy. You can select as many of the options listed as you like.