Katie’s Ratings Plummet

It appears the early fascination with Katie Couric as an evening anchor has fallen quicker than temperatures in the Northeast. Drudge is reporting the perky one's ratings for Monday, Oct. 16, 2006:

NEW YORK CITY
WABC 7.1
WNBC 5.3
WCBS 3.7

LOS ANGELES
KABC 5.9
KNBC 3.1
KCBS 1.5

WASHINGTON, DC
NBC 9.3
ABC 7.8
CBS 2.5

Yikes. This certainly coincides with views expressed by Variety’s Brian Lowry on October 15 (hat tip to TVNewser):

As for Couric, the trajectory of her personality-driven leap to CBS has proven strangely predictable: enormous initial curiosity followed by a dawning realization there's not much "there" there -- a point starkly underscored by her "How does one go about asking the secretary of state out on a date?" interview with Condoleezza Rice on "60 Minutes."

Small wonder so many who sampled Couric's "CBS Evening News" since abandoned it, leaving her with 7 million viewers during the Oct. 2-6 week -- 1.6 million behind front-running NBC, and back in the third-place hole Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer occupied.

Ouch. Lowry wasn’t optimistic about Katie’s future:

CBS will undoubtedly tinker with the broadcast, but playing to Couric's strengths will only make it softer. Indeed, Rice's return to discuss the North Korean crisis last week underscored Couric's limitations when interviewing world leaders as opposed to lead singers and movie stars.  

Hmmm. Maybe Andy Rooney was right.