On Wednesday the big headline all over the media landscape was that Katie Couric finally decided to move her perky but serious persona to CBS News to host their evening national newscast.  Is this big news?  Will this change the way we all govern our lives? Ten or twenty years ago it would have been the story of the year, but today, I’m not so sure.  The proliferation of cable, satellite, and the Internet has either leveled the playing field or decimated traditional information outlets, depending on if you’re old or new media.

If you break the current media landscape down to two main sources, you have television on one side and the Web on the other, with each having good and bad qualities.  Overall, you have to say that the Web is probably the best tool ever invented to efficiently and conveniently spread information out to the most people, but it has no human personality — just plain old information.  Oh, yes, certain websites have a certain look to them and you can play videos and have conference calls, but it’s more like the telephone — a means to an end.

Television, on the other hand, is an end to a means.  It has lots of personality — actually, it is mostly all personality, especially now that there are a gazillion channels from which to choose.  By this definition, television is more human, but it lacks the ability to communicate information effectively and conveniently for the best interests of the viewer.  Getting back to Katie Couric, she works on television because she is all personality — you watch because you like her, not because you’re trying to get information from her.  You sit at your computer and click to CNN.com or a number of other news websites to strictly get news and information.  Even the so-called cable news channels have switched to the all-personality method.  CNN did start 25 years ago almost like a website, delivering the headlines over and over, to which you simply tuned in for a few minutes until they would begin repeating themselves.  Then the first Gulf War showed them that people would stay and watch longer when certain interesting news personalities were on the air, such as Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett, Wolf Blitzer, and the Scud Stud, Arthur Kent, the dashing correspondent that wooed a lot of women to watch the first TV war.  

Now all news on TV is entertainment to some degree, whether it’s Bill O’Reilly or Billy Bush.  The Web is still strictly a no-nonsense, fact-finding, information-tool kind of media where each website pretty much is interchangeable and the difference is more of how it is delivered than how it emotionally connects to people.  What is the future?  Television cannot continue strictly as entertainment and be as powerful as it has since the 1950s.  The Web won’t just stay the way it is because people will begin to demand more personality.  The result will be the merging of the two media, which is slowly beginning to happen as we speak.  I think in the not-so-distant future, all homes will have one information portal, whether through one or a combination of technologies, i.e., cable, wireless, telephony.  You may certainly have multiple screens in various rooms, but through these screens you will communicate with others (picture and voice), watch entertainment, obtain news and information, and monitor your home’s systems.  It will be a combination television, computer, telephone, stereo, and appliance.  And you’ll be able to take it all with you on a handheld duplicate version, all geared to your personal specifications.  Your spouse, kids, roommates, and in-laws would all have their own versions programmed to their own tastes and needs.  

So when Katie Couric announces that she’s leaving the Today show and switching to the CBS Evening News, don’t believe it’s going to change America.  That’s more a job for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the clever person who came up with podcasting (Adam Curry).

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Rich Burlingham