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The Role of the News AnchorLosing three major news anchors has affected how this role is seen by networks, as well as the publicMajor news networks have depended on having one news anchor as the public face of their organization for the last half-century, but this tradition might be changing.
With the news last spring that Katie Couric would make the move from NBC’s Today Show to CBS and take over as the evening news anchor, it appears that American network television is ready for one last attempt to save the news anchor-as-celebrity tradition. The last couple of years have been troubling for this practice in that the three stalwarts of American news are gone (Dan Rather was let go, Tom Brokaw retired, and Peter Jennings died); the question now is, can Katie save this endangered position? There are some voices in the television news business that believe the days of television news anchors ruling network television are over. With the three ‘big’ guns gone, there is a feeling among some commentators that it will be difficult for network news to ever place so much power in the hands of a single anchor ever again. Instead, news stations will turn to multiple news personalities to handle different aspects of that network’s news coverage, and these anchors will in turn have more difficulties achieving a ‘cult-like’ figure status. However, the other so-called camp on this issue sees Katie Couric’s move to CBS as their night-time news anchor as indicative of the fact that prominent news anchors being the face of a network is still very much a reality. Since Tom Brokaw’s retirement at NBC, Brian Williams has emerged as a legitimate network anchor, and has succeeded in establishing his presence at the network. Couric’s first 3 months at CBS have been a learning experience, but she has done a good job in retaining viewers, and even attracting new ones. Her first election night as news anchor received high ratings for the network, and she continues to get high-profile interviews. Whether or not news anchors will continue to be treated as veritable celebrities in this age of non-stop media presence is still up in the air. Perhaps the most important question is whether the younger generation will stay loyal to an anchor and a network in the same way their parents and grandparents have. Couric’s appointment as CBS’s sole night-time anchor shows that the news anchor role is still thought of as extremely important by the major networks, and that the future of this position appears stable, at least for the time being.
The copyright of the article The Role of the News Anchor in Newspaper Journalism is owned by Kate Butler. Permission to republish The Role of the News Anchor in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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