Media: Getting to the first story in a Network newscast.

When Susan Zirinsky was named head of CBS News, she told Variety she was shortening the time from the open of the nightly broadcast to start of the first story. 

The CBS broadcast “gets out of the heds before anyone else,” says Zirinsky, watching the behind-the-scenes action from a busy control room. It seems like a small thing, but it’s big for Zirinsky, who points a visitor’s gaze at screens showing that, at least on this night, viewers can see O’Donnell at the desk delivering her first story while NBC and ABC are still in the midst of their openings. Before O’Donnell’s arrival at “CBS Evening News,” the intro consisted of a montage of clips, with someone else’s voice talking over them, that lasted 90 seconds — an eternity in the high-pressure world of a newscast that is, without commercial breaks, just 20 or so minutes long.

     I applauded that change when it happened---before my retirement---but here we are almost a year after that Variety interview and CBS has reversed course. The open of the CBS evening news now stretches twice that "eternity"...a full three minutes...10% of the entire newscast.
     That is a relatively "small thing", yet it bugs me every night. Get to the story, I grumble, as Anchor O'Donnell and others continue talking about what is coming up.
     

     Only a news nerd like myself would likely focus on it. And I'm sure Zirinsky's layoff of 75 CBS network news staffers at the end of May will loom much larger to those people, and the workers left behind to pick up the slack.