Lagging Ratings Led to Swift Ouster of Executive Producer
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007
No one at CBS News was more intimately involved in helping Katie Couric shape her evening newscast and get it on the air each night than her executive producer, Rome Hartman.
But as the ratings languished and the "CBS Evening News" seemed to drift, the network decided this week to dump Hartman and replace him with hard-charging, high-profile producer Rick Kaplan -- the first public acknowledgment that the newscast and its $15-million-a-year anchor have not lived up to expectations. The deal was sealed Wednesday night when Kaplan had coffee and a two-hour talk at Couric's Manhattan apartment.
"I love Katie. She is a superb journalist," Kaplan, a former president of CNN and MSNBC and onetime executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight" and "Nightline," said yesterday. "For me, this whole deal is a no-brainer."
While "Katie could have stopped this from happening if she wanted to," Kaplan said, they have an "extraordinary comfort level" with each other. "I came here because I believe in my soul that Katie is the best" of the anchors, he added.
CBS News President Sean McManus, who made the decision after broaching the possibility with Kaplan over lunch last week, said that "listening to his ideas and his confidence in taking this show, and Katie, to the next level convinced me he was absolutely the best person to do this job. . . . Katie was not involved in the decision [to drop Hartman]. She was certainly consulted with respect to Rick."
Hartman's ouster, six months after Couric's debut, comes days after NBC replaced John Reiss as executive producer of "Nightly News." Although Reiss had asked earlier for a reassignment, the shake-ups reflect the growing intensity of a ratings war in which millions of dollars in advertising revenue are at stake. ABC's "World News" with Charlie Gibson has seized the ratings lead from Brian Williams's NBC broadcast in three of the past four weeks. Gibson drew 9.56 million viewers last week, Williams 9.39 million, and Couric 7.51 million.
The abrupt CBS move -- those involved say Hartman had no inkling he was being replaced until McManus told him after Wednesday's broadcast -- buttresses critics who say he and Couric erred in the way they revamped the "CBS Evening News." They initially added a number of features, including a commentary segment called "Free Speech," but began emphasizing more hard news as internal dissent grew and ratings sagged. Executives now concede they made too many changes too quickly.
There is also an X factor. "Having a woman in the anchor chair is something the audience needs to get used to," Kaplan said. "They will."
Two CBS executives, who asked not to be identified because they were discussing personnel matters, said the network concluded that Kaplan could give Couric more direction and bring a sharper vision to a program that the brass had come to regard as inconsistent. Couric, in a statement, called the 6-foot-7 Kaplan "a big personality with big ideas."
Couric made a huge publicity splash when she left NBC's top-rated "Today" show after 15 years and, in September, assumed the chair that had been held by Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer.
McManus, the CBS Sports president who also took over the news division last year, has repeatedly said it would take a long time for the "Evening News" to climb out of the cellar. But, he said yesterday, "I'm a little less patient in wanting to see some improvement in the ratings."
Kaplan said the deal was cobbled together in 48 hours without the involvement of his agent. He said he sat down with CBS chief executive Les Moonves before meeting with Couric.
It is a homecoming for Kaplan, who began his career at CBS from 1969 to 1979, including a stint as an "Evening News" producer under Cronkite. While Kaplan was fired by CNN in 2000 and by MSNBC in June, he is widely regarded as one of the most creative -- and demanding -- executives in television.
"He's very inventive, very dynamic, got a million ideas a day, or 10. Three are brilliant, three are terrible, and he needed someone to figure out which are which," said ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson. "He sometimes goes on rampages -- thunders and screams and hollers. He's a big guy, and he intimidates people. I've seen him terrorize people, and later he comes back and apologizes, and he means it."
Tucker Carlson, an MSNBC host who worked for Kaplan at that network and CNN, said that "he thought big. He is a natural showman. He's a guy who understands drama. If he wasn't in television, he'd be a great Broadway producer."
Kaplan, 59, has been lecturing at Harvard and the University of Illinois since fall. A personal friend of Bill Clinton, he drew some criticism for twice sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton presidency but said it did not affect his journalism.
As Peter Jennings's executive producer at "World News" in the mid-1990s, Kaplan understands the nightly news game. But he said the three network newscasts, which have been losing audience share for a generation, face much tougher competition now from cable news, the Internet and other new media.
"It was easy then to make your program compelling because people had no information until Walter said, 'Good evening,' " Kaplan said. "Today they come armed with an extraordinary amount of information. We all have a responsibility to push these stories ahead."
Couric was quite popular as a morning personality but has been constricted by the limits of a half-hour format. When she has done longer interviews or reported longer pieces, some colleagues have complained that important stories were being dropped or shortchanged.
Hartman spent months planning the "Evening News" launch with Couric and ran the show while commuting to New York from Washington. "This is one of the great jobs in journalism, and it's been an honor and a pleasure to do it every day, although, in all candor, I'd have loved the chance to do it longer," he said yesterday. "But I completely respect Sean's decision."
Hartman said the broadcast "has been improving and will continue to." CBS said he will be given another assignment.
While Hartman, a former "60 Minutes" producer, was loyal to Couric, he occasionally disagreed with her on, for example, her desire to travel to breaking-news stories. Some CBS correspondents grew frustrated as their roles were reduced and said the broadcast lacked a clear identity. Hartman, for his part, had to cope with numerous executives who had conflicting views of what the program needed.
"He has impeccable credentials from a been there/done that perspective, but he's also just an incredibly decent human being," CBS White House correspondent Jim Axelrod said of Hartman. "Everyone feels a bit of sadness that it didn't work out. But everyone knows the business can be brutal at times."
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