• The Daily Beast, Thursday, September 2, 2010 12:22 AM

With a new round of layoffs expected this fall, CBS News is being trimmed to the bone. On Monday, Katie Couric begins her fifth, and quite possibly final, year of hard labor as anchor of the CBS Evening News. However she chooses to mark the occasion, it will no doubt be more subdued than the tears, dancing, and $10 million promotional campaign that attended her debut on Sept. 5, 2006.

Four years and a reported $60 million later, Katie Couric now sits atop a news division that is unrecognizable as the one-time home of Walter Cronkite. In the intervening years, Couric has accumulated prizes for her work and thrown herself into tweeting, blogging, and anchoring special broadcasts on CBSNews.com. Despite Plaudits, CBS News has endured layoffs and cutbacks, and according to senior staffers, another round is coming this fall. The network's two premier daily broadcasts, "Couric's Evening News" and the "CBS Early Show," are recording particularly dismal ratings this summer.

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