Evening news with Couric

Scripps Howard: The audience for network evening news may be on the wane, but who delivers it is still of consuming public interest.
For months, there was speculation about who would fill the vacant CBS anchor chair of Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite, and then there were further months of guessing whether that person would be Katie Couric.
And Wednesday morning the answer came: Yes, the popular star of NBC's "Today" show was leaving after 15 years and, she cracked, 172 hairstyles as co-host.
For both Couric and CBS, it is a leap of faith.
Morning shows, of which "Today" has the largest following, are profitable -- NBC offered her far more to stay than CBS did to leave -- and have growing audiences. The same cannot be said of the evening news programs, among which CBS is in third and last place.
Bubbly
The evening anchors have traditionally been males with graying hair, grave demeanor, some wrinkles and voices bespeaking higher authority. Couric is blond, bubbly, unfurrowed and has a voice of barely suppressed good cheer. (We trust that she will remain "Katie" and not let the suits re-brand her as "Katherine Anne," her given name.) It should be added as a footnote that she also has excellent TV news credentials.
Couric will test the proposition that TV news is inextricably bound up with the personality of the individual delivering it and that the task can only be entrusted to a certain kind of personality.