Exclusive: The CBS Evening News will debut a new logo and new graphics Monday, with an eye toward HD.
TVNewser got a sneak peek at the new look today. CBS news and sports president Sean McManus told us the graphics came about late last year. “It was motivated by looking at the election graphics and realizing they look so much more contemporary, so much clearer, and so much cleaner than the Evening News graphics,” he said. “At that time we charged Bob Peterson with coming up with a new graphic look which he has done.”
Peterson, CBS News’ executive creative director, and his team came up with the graphic design and concept entirely in house in the span of approximately six months. The “convergence of different designs,” as Peterson put it, features a logo with three interlocking globes, moving images in the OTS box and a bolder blue and red color scheme.
But there’s also a notable Web feel. There are headers for each image (see after the jump), and what appears to be drop-down tabs and boxes that would close a window.
So what will the graphics do for viewership? “I’m not a subscriber to the fact that graphics make a difference in the ratings,” says McManus. “This is not about trying to get the ratings up, it’s about trying to make the overall broadcast look and feel cleaner and better.”
So, what about those ratings?
“The ratings are what they are,” says McManus. “Listen, we obviously would like to see improvement. We don’t like at all being in third place. That’s an uncomfortable position to be in. But all we can do, which I think we’re doing, is put on the best evening news broadcast in the business.”
At the center of the new look, anchor and managing editor Katie Couric, who will mark three years with CBS in September. McManus praised Couric’s versatility — on TV, the Web and more, when “put together, results in a pretty good plan to get her exposed on as many different platforms as possible,” says McManus. “And also to give her a chance to exhibit what makes Katie Couric different, which is not so much the way she reads the news, but it’s the way she reacts to things, the way she interviews people. She’s got a very broad array of talents, and a lot of them can’t be seen between 6:30 and 7:00 every night.”