“Is CBS Getting Its Money’s Worth?”

> Update: 12:36pm: “If you were CBS and spent 15 million on a ‘celebrity’ anchor, another 15 million on a promotion campaign and wound up back in third place, what do you think CBS is REALLY thinking?,” an e-mailer says…

Gail Shister asks: “Is CBS getting its money’s worth from Katie Couric?”

She continues: “After a $13 million promotional campaign touting the $15 million-a-year anchor of CBS Evening News, the network has yet to see a real payoff in its investment.

Despite CBS’s incessant spin about Evening News’ ratings improvement from ’05, two developments are beyond dispute:

Since winning the first two weeks following Couric’s Sept. 5 debut, Evening News is back in third place in the weekly network-news Nielsens.

Couric, 49, is delivering about the same viewership as did her lower-paid “interim” predecessor, Bob Schieffer, 69, over his last year.” More…