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The Unbroken Desk
In 2006, CBS Evening News passed over Katie Couric for its anchor chair, hiring a male successor to Dan Rather instead and preserving an unbroken line of male solo anchors across all three major American evening newscasts. The decision, framed internally as a ratings-safety move, became the reference point for a longer argument about why network news chairs remained closed to women for another decade.
Diverged 2006 · “CBS Evening News hires a male anchor instead, maintaining the male dominance of evening news broadcasts.”
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TodayAs of the mid-2020s, no woman has yet solo-anchored the evening news desk at ABC, CBS, or NBC on a permanent basis, though several have served as fill-in or co-anchors during transitional periods. The absence is now a standard case study in journalism schools and media-studies departments, discussed alongside declining evening-news viewership overall, and it shapes ongoing debate about whether the format itself will survive long enough for the milestone to still matter.
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