CBS

...among other format changes under the new Rick Kaplan era.PublicEye editor Brian Montopoli passed along the usual talking points senior management in broadcast news outlets always give when they are trying to save a sinking ship. You know the drill. "This time, more hard news. We swear!"Unfortunately Montopoli left out some hard news in his own March 12 blog post:

Over at TVNewser, Brian Stelter has posted an MP3 of a song that is apparently being played today on WPLJ in New York City, ridiculing the poor ratings performance of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, with lyrics offering several suggestions for Ms. Couric and her producers. Safe to say it's a bit on the cruel side, especially the line about "if you want big success....find Dan Rather's…

As noted Thursday morning on NewsBusters, CBS News has hired Rick Kaplan, a former Executive Producer of ABC's World News Tonight and Nightline who later ran both CNN and MSNBC, to serve as Executive Producer of the ratings-challenged CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. As documented in a Thursday MRC CyberAlert posting reprinted here, Kaplan has had a long record of friendly relations with…

NBC had some "horror stories" to share with its audience on March 7, according to "Nightly News" anchor Campbell Brown. Brown introduced the report by Lisa Myers that told the story of Wesley Wannemacher, a man who's $3,200 credit card debt ballooned to $10,700 after interest and penalties.Wannemacher's plight also featured prominently in similar segments on ABC "World News with Charles Gibson"…

UPDATE (10:46 EST): Kaplan is, of course, an old Bill Clinton buddy. But beyond that, he defended former CBS "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather well after the Memogate scandal as a "balanced and accurate" journalist. Noted MRC Vice President and NewsBusters Editor Brent Baker in his Oct. 4, 2005, "CyberAlert":

Avuncular he might be, but Bob Schieffer can sling Dem spin like a Shrum.Appearing on the CBS Evening News to comment on the Libby verdict, not only did Katie Couric's predecessor in the anchor chair paint things in the grimmest possible terms for Vice-President Cheney, he took things an unsolicited step further. Katie Couric asked Schieffer "how badly does this reflect on Mr. Cheney in your…

Has Ann Coulter gone too far? “Good Morning America” reporter Jake Tapper posed that question on Tuesday’s program. Commenting on Coulter’s use of a slur at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he used the words “vicious” and “mean spirited” to describe the author. An ABC graphic described the speech as “nasty.” And yet, the ABC program has not aired a single story on prominent…