CBS Evening News still in 3rd place with Scott Pelley

On June 14, 2011, Scott Pelley started the CBS Evening News with a piece on the bad state of the US economy, initially noting a decline of retail sales, with no fewer than four correspondents hammering the bad news. Dean Reynolds spoke of $30K for a new car. Dealers are offering fewer incentives than in the last nine years. The earthquake in Japan created an inventory shortage: "you cannot sell what you do not have." The second report originated in Paramus, NJ and discussed the bad shape of an appliance store. Third story was on "weak pay checks meeting higher prices." The fourth story was on unemployment done by correspondent Anthony Mason. Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris complained that there were not enough skilled US workers to fill available jobs. He noted there were 1 million jobs available and only 200,000 grads to fill it. Dow employs about 24,000 workers, with a chem engineer starting at about $85,000. The story compared the situation to Infosys in India. Dow is opening R&D labs in China and Brazil. The story noted Innovation creates jobs. America's high schools are obsolete. There is a need to make science careers glamorous. IPBiz asks: where is Alan Hale when we need him?
Hale wrote: I know that I'm not alone in being frustrated about the current prospects for pursuing any kind of decent career within science, and I'm quite sure that many of you have "horror stories" about your searches for decent employment that are quite similar to my own. See IPBiz post A "Sputnik moment", again and again?

One notes Liveris has a book out: "Make it in America: The Case for Re-Inventing The Economy." MLive reported: According to Dow's 2011 proxy statement, after salary, bonuses, stock awards and other compensation, Liveris earned $21,337,757. That total is up more than $3 million from his earnings of $18,279,792 in 2009.

HuffPo noted:

Pelley ended the week just as Katie Couric, and Bob Schieffer before her, ended nearly every week of their tenures: in third place. The "CBS Evening News" averaged 5.7 million viewers. That's almost the exact average that Couric drew during her final month behind the anchor desk, and just below the numbers that Harry Smith drew during the interim period between her departure and Pelley's arrival.

***Update.

One commenter wrote in:

Engineers are saying those over 50 are getting dumped, not really a shortage but a low salary shortage

Pelley depicted a shortage of outcoming graduates, but didn't really address whether there are in fact workers available.

So Pelley took "the same old, same old" approach rather than digging into off-shoring.

Note to Pelley: check out NBC from two years ago-->

A NBC Nightly News story on 3 April 09 discussed how an IBM Fishkill employee [Frederic (Rick) Clark] was offered the opportunity to keep his job, in India at the prevailing salary in India [20 to 25% of US].


IAM on IBM's Kappos, not touching the political or patent pulse?

On this story, it was NBC, not Scott Pelley, who was doing the Mike Wallace thing.

Same approach to the Weiner story. AP noted:

Again, Pelley steered clear of the story.

Last week, NBC's "Nightly News" spent a total of 8 minutes, 54 seconds on the Weiner story, according to the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism. ABC devoted 8:16 to Weiner, while CBS spent 2:33 on the story, Pew researchers found.

The issue isn't the sexting; it's the Weiner lied about it. Watergate re-visited, but Pelley is missing in action.

AP also noted:

From the on-set recreation of a map that used to hang behind Walter Cronkite to resurrection of theme music that played when Dan Rather was anchor, Pelley's first broadcasts have sent welcoming messages to old-time news traditionalists.

Basically, Pelley and CBS are trying to build better vacuum tubes in the age of the transistor.