ON CBS NEWS' KATIE COURIC'S MUSICAL PITCH

ATTENTION TO DETAIL

(Update:  Paidcontent.org covers the debut broadcast both online and off).

The Wall Street Journal has an amusing story today on the amount of effort and senior management attention that's gone into coming up with the right musical intro to Katie Couric's debut as CBS Evening News anchor tonight.  The entire piece is worth a read.  An excerpt:

"James Horner is an Academy Award-winning composer who has written scores and songs for more than 100 movies...(who) for the past three months,...has been working on what he says is one of the biggest challenges of his career:

Writing a 10-second clip of music that will introduce Katie Couric each weeknight on the "CBS Evening News."

The process has been strenuous, in large part because Ms. Couric and CBS brass wanted him to pour an ocean of imagery into a musical teacup."

Here's where it gets a bit humorous:

"It must be urgent and serious, yet light," says the program's executive producer, Rome Hartman. "Flexible, yet memorable. Regal and encompassing the grand history of CBS News, yet moving forward."

The music couldn't sound too similar to the "Roman fanfares" of NBC and ABC, Mr. Horner says, adding, "Katie told me she wanted something that reminded her of wheat fields blowing rather than Manhattan skyline."

The piece continues:

"Mr. Horner, 53 years old, doesn't watch much TV. He says he was barely familiar with Ms. Couric when he got a cold call from CBS in June asking him to consider the commission."

All this makes more sense when you consider the adjacent chart for the evening news broadcasts of the three networks, from Journalism.org.

I guess one shouldn't be surprised, given how aggressive CBS has been in showing Katie Couric in the best light, including photo-shopping 20 pounds off her in a publicity photo.

It's interesting to contrast this state of affairs with the organic , rough and tumble state of online news.  For example, Google News, the aggregation service which was introduced in mid 2002 as a "Beta" service, mostly to see if the algorithimic-driven news aggregator would stick, only just came out of beta this year. 

It did well enough to catch up with Yahoo! News in reach recently, which itself is only a few years old. 

Now, I realize that comparing online news with TV network news is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison, with the stakes being far lower in the online realm...for now.

But I find the contrast interesting.

My favorite part of the WSJ article above though, is when it gives Mr. Horner's credits in the music industry:

"James Horner is an Academy Award-winning composer who has written scores and songs for more than 100 movies, including "Titanic" -- one of the best-selling soundtracks in history."

Perfect.

Comments

[Bob]

I felt like I was having the news read to me by someone from the 8th grade. There's just no sense of authority in her voice. I've heard other women with authoritative voices...but this is just to juvenile.