CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley says the network evening newscast–even in an age of 24/7 mobile news–has a role to play. “(Viewers) turn to a brand name, such as CBS News, that they can trust to verify what they’ve been seeing and hearing all day [especially] as more news sources that people have never heard of pop up on the Internet.”
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Pelley says cable’s shift away from all-the-day’s-news toward deep focus on one or two major stories leaves the evening newscast filling the void. “We provide an efficient, well-informed digest of the 12 or so most important things that happened in the world today. Our goal is to do that in a way so that at the end viewers say ‘that was worth my time,'” he said.
Pelley also explained the new music and graphics package that CBS unveiled for the CBS Evening News. “I think it was done because they’re trying to make me cool. Coming off of that intro quickens my read a little bit on the broadcast. It charges you up with some energy.”
To mark Pelley’s fifth anniversary, he talked in this CBS News video about the stories he’s covered around the world over the last five years: