Couric leaves, but will her viewers follow?

Is too much weight given to gravitas?

Maybe the purists who are grumbling that Katie Couric doesn’t have the journalistic chops to take a seat once occupied by Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather are burying the lead.

This is no longer about playing to readers of Editor & Publisher or the Columbia Journalism Review. This is about jazzing up the product so the stockholders don’t mutiny.

CBS will plunk Couric into its anchor chair for “The CBS Evening News” and also throw her a “60 Minutes” bone primarily to raise the entertainment value of its news division.

The problem, of course, is whether the folks who tune in to watch the evening news really want that. The guess here: probably not.

Perceptions are hard to shatter. Dennis Miller was an accomplished yukster on the club circuit and on talk shows. But when ABC tried to stick him into the “Monday Night Football” booth, viewers squawked that he had no business there. They didn’t want a fawning fan, and they didn’t want wisecracks on a big third-and-10 with 2:13 remaining.

David Letterman probably shouldn’t have done “Cabin Boy.” Rosanne Barr made an error in judgment by mangling the national anthem at a Padres game. Magic Johnson was unwise to have hosted his own late-night talk show.

NBC VIDEO Couric confirms she will leave 'Today' April 5: "Today" host Katie Couric confirms that she is leaving the show. Today show

Obviously, Couric’s move from NBC’s “Today” show to the “CBS Evening News” is not so drastic a departure. While critics zero in on her cooking segments, her celebrity interviews and her chiseled gams, they should also note that she has paid her dues in journalism and has as much reporting experience in hard news as any of her contemporaries.

(MSNBC.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC.)

But it almost doesn’t matter, because in this domain perception trumps qualifications. CBS is bringing her on not because she is a better reporter than Bob Schieffer, the man who currently occupies the job and who, by the way, has enjoyed a ratings spike during his brief tenure. They’re bringing her in to create star buzz.

In the short term, it will probably be a success. The move is already the talk of the industry, and has been for months. Initially, lots of people will switch over to Katie to see how she handles the big chair. Eventually the hoopla will dissipate and she’ll settle in. But will the audience?

All successful television shows need to achieve a comfort level with their audiences. Viewers didn’t make “Seinfeld” and “Friends” the ratings successes they were solely because of laughs. They also liked spending time with those characters every week.

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