Connie Chung tells pundits to lay off Couric

In today's Philadelphia Inquirer, three female media figures talk to writer Gail Shister about the high expectations on Katie Couric, who is (altogether now) the first solo female weeknight anchor in network history. All three experts think that people are expecting Couric to turn things around quickly, mainly because of her historic ascension to the CBS Evening News anchor chair. But things don't usually work that way.

One of the experts interviewed was Connie Chung, who knows about this issue more than most; she spent two largely tension-filled years of the mid-nineties co-anchoring the CBS news with Dan Rather. "All this takes an enormous amount of time," she told Shister. "TV viewing rarely changes dramatically, whereas programmers do. I think Katie's holding her own nicely." She goes on to say that experts should stop constantly judging Couric.

I tend to agree with Connie. Yes, Couric's ratings aren't good (in fact, the article states, the November ratings were slightly lower than they were when Bob Schieffer was anchor). But she should be given room to find her legs, no pun intended. She did a pretty nice job on Election Night, which bodes well for her ability to cover breaking stories down the road.