• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, June 13, 2007

I take my tarts with some sour cream.

Ex-CBS-News anchor Dan Rather has a theory why "The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" is doing so badly: the show looks more like a dessert with whipped cream.

Rather told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough CBS had hurt the "Evening News" by "dumbing it down and tarting it up." To which CBS Corp. president/CEO Les Moonves responded that Rather's "tart" line was a "sexist quote."

It's true that CBS originally gave Couric "softer" news and features at the start of her regime nine months ago -- but now the show is pretty much straight news. No matter. The bottom line is that the newscast is tracking the lowest ratings in its history.

One wonders if Couric had arrived at the anchor desk from obscurity, say as a local news anchor with no previous history of doing those cooking segments on "The Today Show," would viewers see her differently. Would they just see a hard-working, good-looking broadcast journalist -- but not a woman of TV privilege?

The marketing buildup has been too much for Couric to match in actual performance. And that's what sucks about the news business. If you measure story for story, exclusive for exclusive, perhaps CBS would get better grades.

But that's not how the business press evaluates TV shows, including TV news shows. So perhaps the show has been --to put it kindly -- too-consumer friendly. Harsher critics might say "dumb." But tart? Hmmm.... Has Katie been showing some leg lately in her segments on the Iraq War? We missed that.

Rather says it has nothing to do with gender -- and everything to do with news as entertainment.

Couric started with some 13 million viewers, a number that has now sunk to under 5 million. Moonves says, give Couric some time. But would CBS give any rookie prime-time show nine months of leeway? In this digital age, does TV news get a pass, or just the opposite? Perhaps it should be treated as just another piece of consumer-targeted video "content."

Rather added, speaking about CBS: "These days, they don't know what news is, they know about entertainment... At one point, [Moonves] said you have to have naked news."

Perhaps it'll come to that. Couric could then do the news straight, with no lightweight consumer dispatches -- as well as contributing TV production savings on her clothing allowance.

That might make Rather rather happy.