Where are you Katie Couric?

On Tuesday, September 5, Katie Couric will be making her debut on the CBS Evening News. She replaces Bob scheiffer who took the post after the resignation of Dan Rather this past year.

With today marking the one year anniversary of the levies breaking after hurricane Katrina, evening news programs have fought for top ratings, spending the course of this year compiling the footage that is used for the retrospective coverage aired on all four major networks and the cable news channels. The coverage has been a nice distraction from the John Mark news of recent weeks. And it prepares viewers for the even more gripping coverage that will be shown when television surely marks the fifth year anniversary of September 11th.

It surprises me that CBS did not contract Couric to begin her anchoring earlier, to give the Katrina coverage that softer caring edge that she offered while on the today show and dateline. Though, I imagine that leaving it in the hands of Scheiffer is a nice way of saying goodbye to one of CBS's veteran correspondents and anchors. Though reports today are that Scheiffer will be sticking around with CBS for a few more years.

Born in Austin, TX, scheiffer began writing for the ft. Worth telegraph before taking the news desk at KBPA in Dallas. He took up ranks with CBS in 1969, and began anchoring the Sunday Evening News in 1973. The same year that Courik left her NBC post in Washington to take her seat at the today Show, Scheiffer took the Sunday morning seat at face the Nation, a seat which he continues to hang onto after handing the weekly evening news over to Couric.

Taking off his big Texan hat to welcome Couric, scheiffer stands as an icon along with his fellow Texan, Dan Rather, making way for the future of evening news. One of Couric's first guests will be President George Bush, the person ultimately responsible for the demise of Dan Rather, after rather aired a critical story on bush using an unclear source via the blogosphere. The bad source ultimately helped bring down Rather's legacy. And it will be interesting to see if Couric chooses to throw hardballs or Mr. Softies at the president.

With all three major news networks changing hands over the course of this past year, the look of the evening news is much younger than it was during the major news events of this new millennium. And now a female face will wish us well each evening at 6:59 pm. Though she is not the first female face to sit behind the 6:30 pm news slot, Elizabeth Vargas helping to take the seat shortly before Jennings died of cancer the previous year, Couric does fill the shoes of Managing Editor for the CBS Evening News, making her one of the leading gatekeepers of news in the United states, and probably the first evening news anchor with a host of fan sites that focus more on fassion than hard news. Perhaps the tables might someday turn, when another male from Texas will be interviewing the countries first woman president.

Radio loves to carry around a blanket, a soft, warm, baby blue or pink cotton blanki that it can hold onto while it gazes into the dark unknown that is its future. The blanket is the most reliable and trusted security tool that it holds, and it's so loved that it takes on a life of its own, like Raggidy Ann or Frosty the Snow Man. Though radio likes to give its blanket more hip and modern names like Jack, Sam, Bob, doug or Dave.

On July 26, 2006, WILT 98.7 FM, Wilmington's former oldies station, launched its WILL FOMRAT, which is one of a great number of Variety Hits formats around the country. The format focuses on a mix of top hit singles from the 1970s, 80s, 90s and today. It's one of the largest growing formats in the country, and probably one of the most recognizable when you tune in the radio, listening to the sound of a prerecorded voice telling you that the rules of radio have been broken, and now you're hearing what "We want to hear." Though the format seems more like a last resort for radio, throwing everything it can throw at you in hopes that you'll stick around for the next song, never knowing exactly what it might turn out to be.

The idea of playing a variety of hits throughout a variety of genres is nothing new. In 1990, Orlando broke into a similar format on WBMO. For years now, Chicago has made a commercial success with WXRT, which plays a mix of rock and popular hits with the sounds of artists you normally wouldn't hear on traditional rock or pop stations. What both these stations have, which rises them above the bar over the new groiwng format, is the lack of a name and the feeling of sprobably the one thing that can keep radio alive. That is a feeling of being local, of not turning on Jack FM in New York city and hearing the same thing on Jack FM in Kodiak, Alaska, the formats of both stations being programmed in Dallas, Texas.

After the deregulation of radio in 1996, several groups went around the country buying up all the stations they could. It only took a matter of years before the mainstream was streamlined, replacing DJs with computers. Not long after that came the wave of the numbing sound of Variety Hits, not so much the singles being played, but the sound of the announcer trying to become your best friend, to sell you on the fact that they are, indeed, playing what "you want to hear," as if they've hijacked your IPOD and have held hostage all of your playlists.

The format does have some benefits, bringing a diverse sound to many parts of America that are not so Diverse. It might be piped in via satellite, like westwood One's SAM FM. But at least it's not the same five songs played in heavy rotation on other top 40 stations. Nevertheless, the format seems to think that New Yorkers walk the same line as people in Omaha or Ft. Worth.

In 2001, I spent twenty days traveling ten thousand miles on a Greyhound bus listening to America. My trip had me archiving radio from Portland, ME to Portland, OR. It was while I was on the trip that I began to hear just how diverse America was. Cultures changed as frequent as Interstate exits. Small towns might have awakened to the sounds of John Boy and Billy or Bob and Tom. But they all had their favorite weather man, DJ or evening news anchor on the local television news. Radio came into their homes, their cars, where ever they traveled or stayed. Anchors and DJs were the voice of familiarity they turned to when storms came, when terror struck, or when their home town team made it to the play-offs. But where is Jack, Bob, Doug or Sam in their lives? How is he more of a friend than the voice that tells you to be careful while stepping off of the moving sidewalks at the airport?

The chief problem with so many American stations clinging to the format of your best friend meets your IPOD is that it fuses a good idea of radio format with the bad idea of trying to take away the personal touch radio holds onto. The obscure singles it puts in rotation call back memories of childhood years, of little league games and summer vacations, of times when radio played a song during an important milestone in a person's life. But it then follows it up with a lifeless DJ, the same voice that follows you along the Interstate as you travel from town to town. Rest assured that these formats are equally tested and retested before focus groups. So when they tell you they're playing what "We want to hear," saying it like they're your friend from the old junior high years, ask yourself who exactly the "we" are. Radio hpes that by giving it a name you might have given your children in the mid 1990s, then you'll let it into your living room, have it stay for tea, and then maybe introduce it to your daughter. That's the security blanket radio wants, the idea that you'll fall for it like you fell for your sweetheart in the ninth grade. But remember, a station that will call itself "new" for over a year doesn't want to be your friend. It just wants you to listen to its commercials.

If the sign of the times holds the future, the Mass Media continues to witness the growing convergence of technology and the realization of Marshall McLuhan's vision of the Global Village.

For ten years, since the deregulation brought on by Congress's Telecommunications act, the media has researched, redefined, and redeveloped itself more than any other industry. the computer industry might score higher in this regard. But it, historically, has pivoted on the henge of inovasion--meaning that its mission is to progress. Opposite this business paradigm, which indeed has driven the change of so many other business models, there is the mass media. The distance by which it has grown is measured not by kilos on the scale of progress. Instead, I would measure it by the action and reaction that has caused such a wild flux in the growth of this industry.

AOL's merger with CNN-Time Warner captures the essence of how great a struggle the media has had in deciding the future of its industry. Relished as a bad idea, on how to control and corner the market, the merger has been just one of many attempts by leading media conglomerates to become ruler of the world, while amidst the passion of vane glory, their empire goes up like Niero's Rome.

Graduate schools of Journalism, following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, struggled to invision how the media would look. Myself, going through graduate school then at Grady College, I remember well the debates and discussions on where the media was going. It intrigues me that most of what we predicted while sitting around in conference rooms was wrong. except, that is, for one principle idea: the future of this industry centered around media convergence.

The purpose of this blog is to focus on the progress the media sees as it continues to converge its mediums. From the golden age of radio, to the fusing of FM with XM; from the journalist, to the blogger, this blog offers news and views outside of the mainstream portals.. I wish, also, to focus on the independent media. As the The New Yorker reportered in its July 10-17, 2006 issue, the little movers of the entertainment industry are moving in on the corperate crafted beauties and beasts. The nich has widened the gap of players for content, which will also change the future landscape of the media.

Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments.

A.W. Stephens