"No offense to those over 60, but that's not a demo we want."

That's a quote from Les Moonves at a press conference yesterday, talking about statistics that say the average age for a viewer of the nightly network news programs is 61.

Looks like all of the younger people in the country are getting their news from the web and cable.

Of course, even most of the older people who do watch the network news at night are getting it from Brian Williams and Charles Gibson. November ratings reveal that The NBC Nightly News got an average of 9.2 million viewers, ABC World News got 9.1, and The CBS Evening News was well behind with 6.7 million viewers.

But Moonves still believes in Couric. He calls her a "terrific news person" and "the hardest worker in town." I've been watching Couric a lot lately (she's become my choice when I do watch the evening news on the networks) and she's more than capable. I don't really get the negative reactions she gets from critics. She's better than when she started a year ago and so is the show (thank God they got rid of some of those lame features like "FreeSpeech" and the cutesy photos). In fact, I think that the three news shows are rather interchangeable. They all have solid news, they all have good reporters, and they all dabble in fluff every single night too. Williams, Gibson, and Couric are all fine, and I think that people watch one and don't watch the other two just out of habit or they have some sort of loyalty to one of the anchors or one of the networks.

Do a test the next several nights. If you regularly watch Williams or Gibson, watch Couric for 3 or 4 nights in a row and see if she gives the news just as well as they do.