Follow-up: CBS This Morning 2 Weeks Later
Posted on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 @ 01:23 PM
From Mark Antonitis, a principal with CJ&N:
You mean it’s already been two weeks? When I was about to watch CBS This Morning this morning for this follow-up (which I promised in my last blog) I had that little pang of dread. You know, that feeling you get before you have to tackle an unpleasant job. Like firing somebody you like. Or when you hear the gate agent announce, “For those of you awaiting the arrival of flight… “ You know that feeling? But what I found is that in the past two weeks they have come a long way toward delivering on that promise of covering real news.
It still doesn’t start well. I wasn’t surprised that the “Eye Opener” was still at the top of the show. No one (or possibly just someone) at CBS has yet come to the quite obvious conclusion that you don’t start a fresh morning newscast with a 90-second music compilation of yesterday’s coverage of yesterday’s news. It’s got to be somebody’s baby. And no one important enough has called it ugly. Yet.
Once they got to the news it was better. Certainly better than the last time I watched two weeks ago when it still had the brand spanking new, overproduced, important-people-are-watching dreadful content. Absent were the bleary-eyed CBS News veterans forced to wake up early and trying their best to sound interested and relevant, yet roundly failing to do so.
Instead, there was actual news. Something I was hoping for the first time I watched. The interesting thing about it was that it was mostly new material, albeit, of stories I had seen last night.
Here’s an example: Big story yesterday was the hostage rescue in Somalia. Great story! I watched the evening news coverage last night on CBS and NBC. NBC, as they are inclined to do for such events, used animation to depict the raid. This animation made the point, but it was ludicrously unrealistic.
On the Today show this morning, same story, same package, same ludicrous animation. Typical. Now comes CBS’s first break. The story they ran on the raid this morning was updated with new information, a new package, no hokey animation, and solid analysis by a CBS guy and an expert.
This wasn’t an isolated event. Each story that ran on last night’s CBS net news was not just recut, but redone. It was actually new and completely different. There was also a solid interview with Senator Rubio of Florida. It even had a funny moment when Erica Hill asked Rubio a leading question that would have required him to essentially endorse one of the Republican presidential candidates. A broad smile crossed Rubio’s face, “Good try.” he said and everyone laughed. It would have been perfect, but Charlie Rose made one of those well-intentioned, but cringe-worthy comments while everyone was still laughing.
For the record, the outfits the female anchors wore today got a lot of notice and comments (outlandish, distracting, and just plain bad, were some of the remarks sent to me). Got a lot of notice, that is, except for me. I didn’t notice. Of course I generally don’t notice women’s shoes either.
Overall, there was nothing exceptionally compelling or memorable, but there wasn’t anything really awful. That’s progress! What stood out was the content. They are beginning to do what they said they would do – cover serious news in a way that is different from the competition. I like the coverage.
Suggestion: Some person in charge should call a quick staff meeting of everyone involved with the show. They should drag out the folks involved with “Eye Opener.” Effusively thank all for their creativity, foresight, and I don’t know, their service to the entire organization. You know, brief, but corporately sincere. Don’t give people enough time to figure out you’ve called the meeting to kill the thing, and just kill the thing.
Otherwise, you’re on the right track. Stay on it. Oh, and Gayle King was better too.