By Lisa de Moraes
Saturday, July 19, 2008; C07

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., July 18

Reports that CBS News will replace evening news anchor Katie Couric after the presidential election or the inauguration are not true, division chief Sean McManus re-re-reiterated Friday.

"I can say, and I have said, that it's not true," he said, via satellite, to TV critics at Summer TV Press Tour 2008. That puts to rest -- until the next blogger discovers it -- the story that's been circulating since less than a year after Couric became anchor in September '06 and her ratings quickly fell behind the competition and behind the crowd Bob Schieffer had been amassing when he was filling in after Dan Rather's exit.

"First of all, I think it's actually died down considerably," Couric weighed in on the reports she was leaving "CBS Evening News."

"I can't really control what media writers write," she said, before giving them the Echo Chamber Speech. You know: "I think sometimes we live in a bit of an echo chamber that probably the people in your room and obviously the people here are more fascinated by things along these lines than anyone else in the real world. So it's befuddling to me, the amount of attention I have received," she said.

Because she, too, was appearing via satellite, she could not see the reax in the room and whether the critics were buying it. Not much.

They accused CBS News, and the other broadcast network newscasts, of rock-star journalism -- you know, anchors lured overseas to trail Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East and Europe with the promise they'll get one-on-one interview time and oodles of access.

McManus insisted it was going to be the week's biggest story.

"Any time a candidate who has been questioned a lot about his stance on foreign policy, his expertise on foreign policy -- any time he makes his first major foreign trip to the Middle East, I think is an enormous news event, and I think that if we didn't cover it we wouldn't be doing our job," he said with conviction.

Couric, however, admitted "it was very deft on the part of the Obama campaign. I mean, I have to be honest with you, when John McCain went to four countries in the Middle East in March . . . I think that had he extended an invitation and offered time for each network to sit down and have extensive conversations and access to him during that trip, that's something we would have strongly considered as well."

CBS Newser Jeff Greenfield -- also there via satellite -- said he has "a strong hunch the people interviewing Obama will have tough questions.

"It's not like North Korean television covering Kim Jong Il," he said.

"It's not going to be like, 'How do you like the weather in Jordan, senator?' " Couric agreed.

One critic wondered whether CBS News considered "The Daily Show" "some sort of inspirational competition."

"Yes, I'd like to go right on record. Jon Stewart is my inspiration. I want to be Jon Stewart when I grow up," Schieffer shot back, while smiling his disarming smile.

He gave props to Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose Comedy Central show follows Stewart's.

"I look on them as I do the editorial cartoonists on the editorial page of a newspaper," he explained.

"You know, the editorial cartoonist is the one person on the newspaper that has the right to lie because, you know, they're dealing in parody. And that's basically what you're seeing with Jon Stewart and Colbert."

* * *

William Petersen's Gil Grissom will be replaced on "CSI" this season with a latent serial killer-doctor-scientist played by an actor "of stature," CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler told TV critics at Thank God We're Still Working Summer TV Press Tour 2008.

Petersen decided to exit as a series regular, after the coming season's 10th episode, though Tassler insists he will still show up from time to time. She says he left because of "his artistic decision" to do something else, reminding critics they should not "forget his roots [in theater] as an artist." As if Petersen would let them forget.

The new character will not be the head of the crime scene investigation at first and no one else in the CSI will know about his serial-killer "DNA," she said.

One critic noted it sounded suspiciously like the lead character on Showtime network's "Dexter," edited episodes of which played with some ratings success on CBS this past season as a means of filling time left open because of the three-month writers' strike. "Dexter" is about a forensics specialist named Dexter Morgan who works with a police department and is also a serial killer. One important difference: Dexter has serial-killed; the new guy on "CSI" has not.

"I don't think [the character] was informed by Dexter," Tassler said.

Otherwise, her session was remarkably controversy-free. CBS is the only network that managed to deliver pilots of most of its new series to critics before the tour, so they actually had seen an episode of the series they were going to have Q&A sessions about, so they could ask, you know, informed questions. Even so, some critics felt it just went to show you how 2007 CBS was -- stuck in the past, bound by tradition.

One critic said he was "tempted to ask a question about [CBS's canceled conspiracy-theory drama] 'Jericho' just to drive up traffic on our Web site."

Another critic wanted to get to the bottom of the whole Britney/"How I Met Your Mother" story.

"Did Britney Spears save 'How I Met Your Mother'?" the critic asked.

"She certainly didn't," Tassler said. "It was never in any danger."

Another said ABC Entertainment division chief Steve McPherson had offered to buy him a bottle of wine if he'd ask Tassler if she was seriously studying to become a cantor, thus giving credibility to the theory of a great swath of the TV industry that TV critics are a joke and can be bought pretty cheap, which, we suspect, was McPherson's point. And yes, she is.