Brian Williams' "Nightly News" has lost 533,000 viewers since he took the anchor's chair. Over at CBS, Katie Couric has only shed 287,000, many to natural causes. To be fair to Williams, he had a lot more viewers to lose. Also, it's summer and nothing is happening. [AP]

Nation editrix Katrina Vanden Heuevel, whose commitment to liberalism is almost as strong as her commitment to snuffing out all forms of humor or excitement in her magazine, offers her take on the Dan Rather-Katie Couric kerfuffle. Guess who's to blame? Big corporations!

From time to time the news cycle offers up an event of such import and complexity that it can only be comprehended through the medium of musical theater. This week resident composer Ben Greenman examines the Dan Rather/Katie Couric contretemps.

CBS CEO Les Moonves defends the honor of Katie Couric, calling remarks about her by Dan Rather "sexist." CBS, long known for its championing of female equality, broadcasts such empowering programs as "Two and a Half Men" and "The King of Queens." [AP]

"The mistake was to try to bring the 'Today' show ethos to the 'Evening News' and to dumb it down—tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience," says the former anchor. He also says that while Katie Couric is "prettier than a ten-dollar whore at a prostitute pageant" she lacks the "folksy, front-of-the-country-store gravitas of a distinguished journalist whose talents were seasoned under the white hot Texas sun." [NYDN]

Sir Harry and Tina Brown are the closest thing the New York scene has to a royal couple. (Tina is Tina, and Harry is more charming and also better-looking than HRH Prince Charles of Edinburg.) On Sunday, aboard the Manhattan-sized cruise ship the Queen Mary II, they hosted a luncheon to benefit the American Institute for Stuttering. (Their son George for many years had a severe stutter.) Katie Couric was the M.C. Carly Simon was an honoree. Jack Welch sat in turtle-like repose as did, closer to the back, a very disengaged former gossip columnist Lloyd Grove. Candace Bushnell promised to set me up on a blind date and despite the early call to port—11 a.m.!—the champagne flowed freely. Joshua, still recovering from the BBQ festival avant-hier biked to Red Hook, following the limousines to the Cruise Terminal. Photographer Nikola Tamindzic took a cab.

That compares to ABC's 89 cents for Charlie Gibson watchers and NBC's 55 cents for bargain Brian Williams. To be fair, you've got to figure in the extra medical costs that the old people who watch CBS incur. [NYP]

Bowled Over [People]
[Photo: Thos Robinson]

• We are all tools of the 2008 campaigns' opposition research punks. (Yay! Gawker will so do your laundry, bring it on!) Also, Matt Drudge Hearts Mitt Romney. (Mini-Mitt Guide: Likes abortions, loves death penalties, no longer supports the gay marriages.) [Salon]
  

• Harry McCracken, who resigned as EIC of PC World in a dispute with the mag's CEO, has been reinstated. The CEO has been reassigned. [Wired]
  

• Conrad Black's second-in-command turned star government witness serves up Lord Black on a platter. [WSJ]
  

This morning's Philadelphia Inquirer ran a piece by Gail Shister positing that Katie Couric would leave the CBS Evening News anchor chair after the 2008 election. It's a story full of hedges (the first two paragraphs contain a "may," a "possibly," and a "there's a growing feeling") and CBS News was quick to refute it.

• Forget Al Sharpton, it's the blogs that brought Imus down. That and, you know, the massive exit of advertisers. (David Carr's theory: was new nonstop news cycle.) [WSJ]
  

• Bernie Goldberg: will bitch about CBS for food. [NYP]
  

Ah, the long arm of the gay mafia. (As anyone who's ever written about Anderson Cooper knows, the experience comes complete with pink-tinged emails that begin "Be nice to Anderson, he is my friend.") Now they've gone and somehow gotten CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's contract upped to $50 million over five years, according to Page Six. "That's a Katie Couric sort of salary," noted TV Newser in its dry way. Well, we certainly hope he doesn't now feel compelled to go the whole colonoscopy route.

We saw the following editor's note on Katie Couric's blog yesterday and were too "overwhelmed" to tease out its "implications":

• Katie Couric asks Harvard happiness professor how to be content. Shockingly, the answer does not involve ratings. [CBS News]
  

Newsbot Katie Couric appeared on "The Colbert Report" and it didn't take long before the host was challenging America's third-favorite network news anchor to flash her gams for the camera. Katie demurred; clearly, she's still stung by those bitchy comments from Alessandra Stanley.

• CBS News hired Rick Kaplan without consulting Katie Couric. They probably just didn't want her to worry her pretty little head about it. [NYT]
  

• Rick Kaplan brought in to save ratings-challenged Katie Couric. [NYP]