Ever get the feeling that when, on the off chance you tune in to your local CBS station around 6:30pm, that you're watching a race horse who needs to sent off to the farm? If the answer is no, it's because you always have somewhere better to be at 6:30pm, which might include a neighborhood watering hole, your son's soccer practice, or drowning in the Hudson River.

In the umpteenth story about Katie Couric and her ratings woes, the NYer's Nancy Franklin wastes space chronicling the anchor's storied past, and uses not enough space to explain why evening news fatigue is nobody's fault, and everybody's. (Luckily, though, there was room for this excellent Couric illustration.) Yes, there is a Jon Stewart mention here, because in these type of stories, there is always a Jon Stewart mention.

But I don’t think that people want less news; they want, I believe, the same kind of informed passion and doggedness that TV-news people displayed while covering Hurricane Katrina, and they want anchors to go deep into issues. I would more than happily watch Brian Williams do an hour of news every night (and that’s not, I should say, because a member of my family works for NBC News). Who knows, young people might turn on their TVs in droves if news organizations had a few choice strands of Michael Moore’s DNA in them, and pointed out when, say, a public official wasn’t telling the truth. Jon Stewart is a lightning rod both for people who decry the notion that young people get their news from watching “The Daily Show,” and for people who think that his (and Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report”) is the only current-events show worth watching. I’m not a Stewartite, but when Dick Cheney denies making certain statements about the war in Iraq and Stewart shows three video clips that prove he’s lying, I think he’s providing a real service to the country, and I’d like to think that that’s what his fans are responding to. [New Yorker]

Meanwhile, 71-year-old Bob Scheiffer, who was supposed to retire from CBS News after the presidential inauguration, just signed a "long-term deal" with the network to remain chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation host. [WaPo] Too early to renew speculation he'll be back in the anchor's chair once Katie leaves? Nah.