Anderson Cooper: Replacing Couric?

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last updated 10 January 2015

A New York Times report suggesting that CNN's Anderson Cooper could be replacing CBS News' anchor Katie Couric has met with almost universal skepticism in media circles. Though Cooper already contributes to CBS's "60 Minutes," his spokesperson denies that any further discussions are taking place. Not all commentators believe it's that simple:

This smells like a desperate P.R. power play: Insiders are telling me that Cooper's team planted the Times's story, says Roger Friedman at the Hollywood Reporter, because he's desperate to get out of his ratings disaster at CNN. If that's true, I doubt CBS will bite. For one thing, Couric gets about 6 million viewers nightly, while Cooper draws less than 1 million — he's not exactly Oprah. So, "don’t start planning for the Invasion of the Silver Fox just yet."

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Despite Couric's shaky record, this rumor is garbage: "I’m skeptical — don’t expect Cooper to anchor the [CBS] Evening News any time soon…or ever," says Steve Krakauer in Mediaite. Couric has frequently been under fire (the Philadephia Inquirer called her an "expensive, unfixable mistake" in 2007), but she's making "in-roads that don’t show up in the Nielsen ratings." Her web program '@KatieCouric' has made significant progress in helping CBS deal with the changing network news world.