Now that has Rome Hartman re-joined the media playground under "employed" status – with his plush new gig exec producing a new BBC evening newscast – it's about time he mouthed off on his tenure with Katie Couric.

Minus the mouthing off part.

The former CBS Evening News exec producer tells Broadcasting & Cable:

I have tremendous affection and respect for Katie and for Sean McManus [president, CBS News and CBS Sports] and all of my colleagues at CBS News. I worked there almost 25 years. I'm very proud of my time at the Evening News. What we were trying to do was take a broadcast that had a tremendous tradition and draw as many new people to that venerable broadcast as we could. That's a really worthy goal. We didn't execute it nearly as well as I wish we had. But we also didn't screw it up the way some people seem to think we did.

As for Rick Kaplan, who replaced him?

I think it's a good broadcast and one that I believe will find an ever larger audience. But I've made it a point not to comment about the specifics of anything he's doing. He's got enough armchair quarterbacks. He doesn't need another one.

Snooze.