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Ratings-wise, the Katie Couric Evening News seems to be going nowhere fast, so CBS News President Sean McManus is bringing in veteran Rick Kaplan to stir the pot a little. Kaplan, who has run MSNBC and CNN, replaces Rome Hartman. Kaplan is tall (6 foot 7) and intimidating ("He's going to bend a lot of people the wrong way," somebody told the NY Post), but during the February sweeps period, the CBS nightly news was behind top-rated ABC by more than 2 million viewers - and that's a tough number to ignore. Said Couric in an interview on Tuesday, "I've never really obsessed over ratings." Yeah, well she had better start.
More by Mark Lacter:
American-US Air settlement with DOJ includes small tweak at LAXSocal housing market going nowhere fast
Amazon keeps pushing for faster L.A. delivery
Another rugged quarter for Tribune Co. papers
How does Stanford compete with the big boys?
Those awful infographics that promise to explain and only distort
Best to low-ball today's employment report
Further fallout from airport shootings
Crazy opening for Twitter*
Should Twitter be valued at $18 billion?
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Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.