CBS Evening News Anchor Bob Schieffer “Had This Idea For A Long, Long Time”

The best part of Zap2It’s story about Bob Schieffer is that it lets the anchor talk at length:

“I have had this idea for a long, long time, that the best way to do the news would be if somehow, the correspondents could talk to each other on the air the way they do in the newsroom. That’s where you get all the candor, all the color, all the stuff that normally doesn’t end up in a formal presentation. Everybody was a little apprehensive in the beginning, but now, they’re all into it and really getting a big kick out of it…and I think we’re getting more information on the air. All of the evening news programs, not just ours, have to evolve into something beyond what they are right now. Basically, they’re a summary of what’s happened during the day. We’ve found out over and over that when people turn on the evening news, they already know what the headlines are. What we have to do is tell them something that goes beyond what they’ve heard all day on cable or read all day on their computers. That doesn’t mean you’re always going to have some exclusive fact nobody else knows about, but where we can really be of service to the viewer is to put everything in perspective. We can say, ‘This is really different from what you’ve been seeing on Capitol Hill’ or `This is something serious you should pay attention to, and here’s why.'”

> Also: “If I was asked right now to [anchor the evening news] for an extended amount of time, I don’t know what my response would be. If they asked this afternoon, I’d probably say yes, because I’m having so much fun. Three months from now, I might feel differently. I’m just taking it day by day, but everybody seems happy so far.”

> Update: 5:03pm: Jan e-mails: “I think that Mr. Schieffer is on the right track…In order for the conversational approach to work at CBS, though, I think that the viewers have to feel that they ‘know’ the reporters to a certain extent and the viewers have to like the reporters as people. CBS will have to screen out the correspondents who are perceived by the viewers as obnoxious.”