Katie Couric and CBS are in third place

Katie Couric and CBS might be in third place after all of those millions of dollars they've spent on salaries and ad budgets, but they are staying positive according to the New York Times:

The viewership of Ms. Couric’s program, which CBS hyped in advance of its arrival as if it were a new prime-time drama, had dropped every week since its opening week after Labor Day (when it drew about 10.2 million viewers a night) until last week, when it regained about 300,00 viewers.

Also last week, Ms. Couric’s broadcast drew about 400,000 viewers more than Mr. Schieffer’s had during the same period a year ago, an increase of about 6 percent, according to Nielsen. Mr. Williams’s broadcast, by contrast, was down by more than 300,000, or 4 percent, when compared with a year ago, and Mr. Gibson’s broadcast was down by a similar margin.

“We really believed that we would have a huge amount of initial curiosity, and we would then settle in for a long, hard pull, which is what we’ve done,” said Rome Hartman, executive producer of Ms. Couric’s program. “This is when the real competition is going to begin.”

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