Thaindian News

New York, Aug 26 (THAINDIAN NEWS) There was a huge disappointment for CBS Evening News last week. Even though Katie Couric and her team were up to the task of broadcasting from Afghanistan, their only reward was a slump in the number of viewers watching their news program.

The Nielsen Co. report will no doubt dampen the spirits of news broadcasting firms trying to deliver value to viewers even in these hard economic times. Rick Kaplan, who is the CEO the company said he was proud of their efforts to make the trip to Afghanistan because it was vital that their story was told to the world.

Only an average 4.89 viewers watched the CBS News in the past week, which is a record low for an evening news audience in almost 20 years in which these records have been monitored by Nielsen. CBS also had less than 5 viewers for a week in June, which is notorious for low TV viewership.

Katie Couric and the “CBS Evening News” team did some striking work during a two-day trip to Afghanistan last week, only to see some record-setting low ratings in return.

The first day of the Afghanistan broadcast was on Thursday and 4.69 million people watched the news. Friday’s broadcast was watched by 4.38 million people representing a decline in viewers. Couric also did an interview with Gen. Petraeus during her Afghanistan stint.