• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 14, 2008

TV casting is something close to Les Moonves' heart. So it must hurt that CBS' one high-profile, major talent decision turned out not to be cast in the right lake.

After paying $15 million a year for Katie Couric, CBS learned one major lesson -- that one well-loved, high-rated early morning TV host/interviewer wasn't enough to turn around a declining segment of the broadcast business.

Who will replace Couric?   I'll tell you this -- it won't be anyone making $15 million a year. Not Scott Pelley, not Anderson Cooper, not Chris Matthews, not Stephen Colbert (ha!).

The broadcast news business in 2008 is way different than the news business in 1998 or the business in 1988. Now CBS should be focused on a new financial model, including perhaps shared resources with a cable network operation like CNN.

CBS probably could dismiss the high cost of a network anchor --but not the problem of low ratings. Still, when Couric leaves CBS, the network won't make the same high-cost casting mistake again. The era of celebrity news readers is, once and for all, over.

On the one hand Couric's hiring was daring -- the first female anchor of a broadcast network's main evening telecast. But underneath, it was still conservative, with a now-outdated process of hiring TV news journalists as if it were a casting decision.

Couric was frustrated with the half-hour evening news broadcast structure. And who wouldn't be? She couldn't get to do what she does best -- interview people.  But that's not the main job of broadcast news anchors -- who in the U.K. are called "news readers."

Considering the direction of news in general, next time CBS should think more modestly and go with a relative unknown. Expectations will be lower, the glare of the press more muted.

Remember when CBS was thinking about Dan Rather's replacement, Moonves talked about abandoning the "voice of god" single news anchor, and perhaps putting in a trio of anchors, supposedly with lower star value.

Perhaps that is the right casting approach now .