Pelley Helps to Redefine CBS

From the Los Angeles Times: The anchor has assisted in pushing the network’s ‘Evening News’ toward hard news, especially on foreign affairs and domestic economic distress. That offers promise it can escape the ratings cellar.


Reporting from New York —— From the vintage globe projected behind the anchor desk to the Cronkite-era producers mixing it up at story meetings to the no-frills reports that fill 21 minutes and 16 seconds each weeknight, the “CBS Evening News” has made a determined effort to bring newsy back.


A shift that began in the latter months of Katie Couric’s five-year run has accelerated and taken on a new fervor in the last nine months since the ascension of Scott Pelley to the anchor’s chair.


When Pelley took the seat once occupied by Walter Cronkite last June, it represented a return to form at CBS News — giving perhaps the network’s most visible platform not to a celebrity host but to a longtime reporter best known for his work on “60 Minutes” and for dozens of forays to Iraq, Afghanistan and other world hot spots.

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