CBS - TV NEWS VET KAPLAN TO TAKE OVER CBS EVENING NEWS REINS

CBS is expected to name as early as today (Thursday) veteran news producer Rick Kaplan to take over as executive producer of the struggling CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Kaplan would replace Rome Hartman, who had been producing the program before Couric arrived on the scene last September and who had seen the ratings of the newscast rise significantly under her predecessor, Bob Schieffer. Since Couric's advent, however, ratings for the invariably third-place CBS newscast have dropped precipitously. They are now down more than 6 percent from what they were a year ago. Moreover, critics have drubbed the newscast for including too many soft features, apparently in an effort to win over Couric's former Today show viewers. In the meantime, ratings for ABC's World News have overtaken NBC's Nightly News, resulting in the replacement of the executive producer of the NBC newscast earlier this week. Kaplan is a former president of CNN and MSNBC and was an executive producer on ABC's World News Tonight and Nightline.

08/03/2007