Evening News Is About To Undergo A “Fundamental, Symbolic” Change

Verne Gay in Sunday’s Newsday:

“Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., when the ‘Evening News’ becomes ‘The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,’ a TV institution isn’t just undergoing a mere semantic change but a fundamental, symbolic one as well.

Consider that for most of their history, these Big Three newscasts thrived on the proposition that in the span of 22 minutes the viewer at home could get the whole wide world. It was a frivolous notion, perhaps even an illusion, but for it to succeed, each needed an anchorperson of probity, justice, fairness, sobriety, intelligence, broad experience and an ability to read a TelePrompTer. And until this Tuesday, he was almost always a ‘he.'”