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It's another week, and The Katie Tyler Couric Show is still stuck in third place. But you know what? It's okay, because this is all part of the master plan.

"We really believed that we would have a huge amount of initial curiosity, and we would then settle in for a long, hard pull, which is what we've done," said Rome Hartman, executive producer of Ms. Couric's program. "This is when the real competition is going to begin."


Whew! Here we were, thinking CBS was in trouble, so much so that Katie started bringing in apple pies.

Even better, Couric pulled in 400,000 more viewers than Bob Schieffer did this time last year, while numbers for NBC and ABC are down (though that may not be such a huge accomplishment considering Schieffer never waxed his legs).

One point of controversy has been the creatively titled "Free Speech" feature at the end of each broadcast, on which Hartman said,

"People either like it or hate it... People who hate it really hate it. And some of those people work here."

Damn free speech haters.