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The new theme song that opened the CBS Evening News yesterday is by the same composer who wrote the score for Field of Dreams, so perhaps it's appropriate for Katie Couric to recall that movie when asked about attracting viewers to network TV's third-place broadcast.

"If we build it, they will come," she said.

After months of speculation, Couric and CBS have finally built it.

Few doubt that Couric's debut on the newscast will inflate the audience in the short-term.

But it remains to be seen what effect Couric, the first sole female anchor of a network evening newscast, will have on the genre, which has been plagued by audience erosion for several decades.

In the last year, overall viewership of the three network news broadcasts has ebbed amid a period of upheaval behind the anchor desks, which appears to have closed with Charles Gibson's appointment to ABC's World News in May and Couric's arrival at CBS. By the end of the season, NBC remained in the lead, but its audience was down 5 per cent and ABC had dropped 9 per cent, while CBS had edged upward - the only newscast to do so.

Even as the networks gear up for renewed competition at 6:30pm this fall, another important showdown is playing out in a different arena - online.

In their bid to remain relevant, the newscasts are developing ways to reach viewers throughout the day.

NBC's Brian Williams, a veteran blogger, recently began filing a video blog every morning. ABC's Gibson does a top-rated podcast every afternoon. And all three broadcasts regularly post videos online that viewers can access on demand.

"Nobody will argue that there hasn't been fractionalization of the audience," said Jon Banner, executive producer of ABC's World News. "That's why we are investing so heavily in the Web to take advantage of everything at our disposal to reach as many people as possible. The idea is to create, in the World News brand, news that is always on."

ABC recently went so far as to drop the word Tonight from the name of its newscast, a nod to the fact that the programme is no longer bound by its slot on the schedule.

CBS is going further. As from now, viewers can watch the CBS Evening News online at the same time that it airs on television - the first time an on-the-air network news programme will be available simultaneously on the Internet. (NBC has offered Netcast of the Nightly News since October, but it isn't available until 11pm Bermuda time, after the broadcast has aired on the West Coast.

Still, CBS News President Sean McManus cautioned that moving out of third place will not be easy, even with Couric, one of the U.S.'s best-known broadcasters, in the anchor chair.

"I'm not going to consider this a failure if in three months or six months we're not in first place," he said. "It's no secret that the viewership for the television broadcasts is going down and it's going to be very difficult to grow that overall.

"That's why you have to find new revenue streams and new ways to distribute that product."

As from now Couric will introduce new features, including longer analytical pieces about the top story of the day and a "free speech" segment of opinion and commentary - moves she admits will mean fewer overall stories in the 22-minute broadcast.

"There's an atmosphere where people are totally open to trying new things - not reinventing the wheel, but maybe kicking the tyre a bit and maybe patching it here and there where needed," she said. "I think there's a real attitude of, 'Let's give this a whirl and we'll see what happens'."

But the changes have provoked apprehension internally, especially among the news correspondents, some of whom are worried that the lower story count will make it harder to get on the air, network sources said.

Compounding their anxiety is a sense of a cultural shift in the newsroom, which had grown accustomed to anchor Bob Schieffer's low-key style. When they hired Couric, CBS officials also brought on some of the staff that had worked with her at NBC, including an editor who now serves as the newscast's creative director. And eyebrows were raised when Couric's new office began filling with dozens of outfits and accessories that had accumulated in her old office at NBC, where she anchored Today for 15 years.

Executive producer Rome Hartman said he hasn't heard any unease from the correspondents about the new format of the show or Couric's approach.

"We're all challenging ourselves to raise the bar and do ever better work, and I think most people I've talked to are responding to that challenge with great zest and excitement," Hartman said.[[In-content Ad]]

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